Do We Compete Update

Several years ago I wrote a blog about competition. How we compete. How we were and still are driven by rank, by numbers, by accomplishment, and by our leadership team's nature to be the best. At the time of that entry, our company (then Logo Chair Inc.) was #7 in the non-apparel world. 

Since then, things have changed. We have a new name; Logo Brands Inc. We have new teammates; half of our workforce has been here less than 2 years (what happens when you grow rapidly). We have new licensing properties. We have new products. We have a new building for our sales team. We have a new logo and brand identity. We have a new core value (we added #5 two years ago). We have new goals. You get the point… So much has changed, yet as I read the last paragraph of the post from several years ago on “Do We Compete?” I realize some things are the same.

We want to be the best. We want to be number one. I know it is a lofty goal, but isn’t that what goals are for? We are very competitive. The difference is we do not want the companies ahead of us to go out of business. As a matter of fact we are friends with most of them. We don’t want our friends over at Tervis Tumbler to sell less. We want Logo Chair Inc. to sell more. “What about your competitors?” the truth is, we want them to focus on another portion of the business. Our hope is that most of these larger companies get tired of competing with little ole' Logo Chair Inc. and they decide to change the direction of their business toward other products or in a separate industry they are already established. We don’t want them to go out of business. We want them to want to exit ours. There is a big difference.

I know we still have the desire to compete and to be the best. That hasn’t changed. The difference is now we fight off the guys wanting to knock us off the pedestal. You see, between the times of these two blogs, our team did it… We became the #1 non-apparel licensee for CLC. In fact, we were given the inaugural “Impact Award” from CLC this past May. We beat out the class rings. We out sold the guys selling rolls of licensed fabric. We rose above the diplomas, cups, license plates, and flags. In the total rankings we are #10 if you include apparel out of 2500 companies. Crazy… Well not completely crazy because we set out a goal to do this, but you know what I mean…. The crazy part is we feel like we are not done.

There are more customers to sell, more products to make, more market share to obtain, more in front of us than behind us. So what will we do? We will compete. We want to be a top 5 licensee. We now want to sell more hardgoods than 4 other top apparel companies sell clothes. Daunting task? Yeah. However, so was our goal to be #1 in the non-apparel and we were able to do that…