There’s nothing like the pride you feel when locals adopt your small town business and welcome it into the community. We founded and operate Austin Promotional Solutions here in Lago Vista, TX not because we had to but because we absolutely wanted to.There’s a buzzing sense of life and vitality that you get every time someone steps in your store. We believe in hiring locally,supporting our children's sports teams, our schools and our inner city infrastructure. We love our city and we want to put our money where our mouth is:)
It’s no surprise that many small businesses like APS are choosing the little cities over the big metropolises, but in the Promotional Product Industry clients abroad sometimes have the perception that our capabilities are limited to a 50 mile radius. We knew that making it big in small towns means having to do a lot of serious research about which stores would work best. What’s the current market situation? What is the public interested in? What can we make available in the local,central and yes global market?
When it comes to operating a small town business we knew we had a lot of freedom to embrace big ideas to take our business further. We have made a solid footprint in Social Media (seriously Google us...) along with a solid reputation that includes but is not limited to genuinely taking pride in our customer service, truly partnering with our clients by giving them tremendously fair pricing so that they can meet/exceed their objectives while providing the highest ROI. The quality of our work speaks for itself and is a good if not better than any company in our Industry. We have tremendous relationships with ASI/PPAI and regional associations giving us the ability to service anyone around the globe and to pay it forward by volunteering our time/knowledge and experience back into our Industry...in other words we are vested and plan to be around a very long time.
We take pride that business' in our local community appreciate and are more at ease placing their orders with us knowing that they can walk in our doors at any time to check in on their projects. And we in turn get to form strong bonds/partnerships with the business owners/employees in our town when otherwise we may not have the opportunity to do so. This has helped us strengthen the pride and loyalty in our community and this is something that money just cannot buy...
We are also able to find out what our community loves to do and design our product line, production times, promotions and marketing around those things.
Enthusiasts can be found everywhere. We attend our kids sports games/practices, school/community events and churches...and in doing so we find out what our locals like to do when they’re off work and for recreation. This has not only proven to be profitable, but it also contributes to our community’s pride and identity. For example: APS is located on Lake Travis, many of our residents are avid fishermen/sportsmen/coaches/teachers but have to commute to other cities to get their gear, promotional items,rewards etc and we are able to meet many of those needs. We are able to bring community members together which is convenient, practical,rewarding and profitable for all parties. We are also able to educate our youth by providing skills, education, responsibilities and ownership to equip them for a brighter future and hopefully start their own business one day.
We are also capable of bringing on a broader range of clients with our online shop but have the store and warehouse based in our small town. This allows profits from outside the town to benefit our local community while providing many jobs to residents as well which continues to feed ours and our communities pride.
At the end of the day the best part about having a local successful small business also means a successful community as well. Oh...and it only takes a couple of minutes for everyone to meet over at my house after work for some barbecue:)
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