How did we get this all started?
You will notice on our website a whole stack of logos from major companies all over the country. My name is Kelly Smith. Let me tell you my story.
I was a pioneer in the digital printing world in the early 90s and became the third person in the world with a particular digital printing system and quickly moved into the grand format printing arena. We want to focus on the really big prints, the ones on the sides of buildings.
With this newfound technology I wanted to figure out the best way to market my company and reach clients other than the ones in my hometown. I wanted to make a big splash and really send message that we had something very special here and that you should take a look at us.
In 1994 there was a design show in New York City. It wasn’t really the type of design that we were involved in because this was everything from packaging, logos, fashion, interior design, etc. But I knew that there were many world-famous designers that came to the show and so I came up with the idea of just printing a great big print that went from floor to ceiling in the convention center.
We got permission from a famous artist to use one of his beautiful paintings and we went about and printed our product, rolled it up in a tube and shipped it to New York all the way from Nevada. The only other thing we had in the entire booth was a couple of brochures, some business cards and two small posters. The booth was dominated by this giant floor-to-ceiling print.
In reality, the entire trade show was dominated by this print!
We were the talk of the town. All these designers would come by and stare at the beauty of this image. They would grab one of our business cards, look it over and asked, “where is Sparks New York?”
We told them that was not NY but NV. We were not in New York, we were in Nevada. They were shocked.
We asked them, “You’ve never seen this before?” They replied, “No. This is absolutely beautiful.”
Imagine, a humble company in Sparks Nevada attending a tradeshow in New York City and blowing away everything these world-famous designers had ever seen. It was a life-changing event for our company. From this one tradeshow we received contacts and leads with which we produced millions of dollars of business. This one show made it possible for us to do work for all of those companies listed on our page. Every one of those has a story behind them and obviously, not all the businesses we did work for are listed or shown there.
Those were fun times and everything was going extremely well until something happened. The manufacturer of the printing equipment that we purchased did not live up to the service agreement and that caused me to lose the company. We had everything in the world going for us except one thing: true customer service. This is truly a gruesome and sad story with which I don’t want to talk about anymore. I’d rather relive the fun times and relish the amazing opportunities that we had. We had developed some great relationships and were able to satisfy the needs of the pickiest clients in the world. They loved our work and things were going well. I wish it would not have ended.
Starting in 2004 I changed from doing gigantic prints all over the world and started focusing on the new technology of the Internet. I now take the same tactic with all of my Internet clients. I want to make sure that they are happy. I want to make sure that they are successful because the number of people that view our creations online is far greater in the number of people that saw our giant prints on the sides of buildings. The website actually has far greater reach than a banner. Yes, my things have been on television, in the movies, at the Olympics and on the Super Bowl, but all of those things fade away.
Your website does not.
If you would like to make a dynamic impact on the world and increase the number of customers that you have, please give me a call at 775-722-4949.
