Over the past few years, the world has seen some pretty tough economic times. It was extremely difficult for small businesses to stay afloat during the latest US recession (beginning late 2007 and lasting into the summer of 2009). Dr. Shrink, Inc. felt the need to fight through the recession instead of hanging back and having it adversely affect our business. In order to combat the harsh financial struggle that seemed to be everyone’s biggest enemy; Dr. Shrink was progressive in our approach to overcome these tough times.
Dr. Shrink knew it was crucial to be smart on where we chose to spend our money during this time. We were still a fairly new company in 2007 (in our 15th year of business) so continuing to promote our name and the Dr. Shrink brand was critical. We had often exhibited at trade shows as a way to promote our products, but during the years of 07’ – 09’, Dr. Shrink looked at trade shows with a heavier focus and also as a necessity. CEO Mike Stenberg invested the time and money into exhibiting at more shows in order to promote our company and make new customers; even when it seemed like new customers were far out of sight.
Dr. Shrink has taken pride in knowing we have always been a forward-thinking and innovative company and we wanted to build on these strengths during the recession. In addition to providing our customers with an extensive, high quality line of premium shrink wrap and installation accessories, we continued to develop new and useful products for our customers to help them stay proficient. Creating new, innovative products takes an enormous amount of time and money. Even during this hard economic time and our reduced budget, we knew it was vital to continue putting resources into new product development. Living up to the high standards our customers expect from us was a must and creating these new products definitely helped us grow. In addition to bringing new products to the market, we put extensive effort into researching potential distributors to supply Dr. Shrink products worldwide. We wanted our products to be readily available for all customers no matter what part of the globe they’re from. Adding more national and international distributors during these hard times helped us grow even more. In addition to these efforts to grow during the recession, we knew one thing would still be around once the recession was over—the internet. Dr. Shrink decided to revamp the company website to make it more user-friendly and provide easier navigation. We also optimized the site so it could easily be seen when searched online.
Lastly, and maybe one of the most monumental steps that Dr. Shrink took during the recession, was the creation of a new department within the company– our Marketing Department. In July of 2009, Dr. Shrink hired Angela Jensen to be a full-time telemarketer and as time progressed, so did our marketing outlets and services. We built a presence on many social media outlets and started blogging. We also created custom Dr. Shrink flyers, which promoted our premium shrink wrap products targeted to new industries. Our new flyers were taken to all relevant trade shows; construction, scaffolding, agriculture, wind power, packaging & transportation, the list goes on. Dr. Shrink realized with a new marketing department intact, that in addition to marketing our own company, we could now help our customer’s promote their company. We wanted to provide our customers (who didn’t have the resources to attend trade shows, spend time on advertising, etc.) with marketing help and guidance. Some examples of marketing assistance offered to our customers are: custom flyers, logo creation, affordable website templates, press release kits, and many other tools. This side of our Marketing Department has made an impact on our customer’s business, in turn helping our own. It is nice to know Dr. Shrink and our customers are growing and prospering together.
The recession is over and Dr. Shrink has come out of it thriving by being proactive and forward-thinking. We have developed and matured as a company and will always strive to offer our customers the absolute best products and customer service.
