Dr. Shrink is proud to announce a new member has been added to our dynamic shrink wrap team! We would like to formally introduce Karan Korolenko to the Dr. Shrink staff.
Karen is from Manistee, MI and joined our Customer Service team on October 24th, 2011. She brings a great deal of experience to the table; she previously worked in customer service for five years at an international company out of Chicago.
Under the wing of Kelly Buckingham in our Accounts Receivable department, Karen is currently learning very quickly how to input online orders and use our order entry software. Karen had great remarks about her instructor saying, “Kelly has been really wonderful; she is an excellent teacher.” When asked what her favorite part about working at Dr. Shrink is so far, Karen said, “I like the people; it’s a very laid back and comfortable environment. Even though it is laid back and comfortable, it still is very efficient.”
Don’t be surprised when you soon start hearing Karen’s voice answering the phone to help take your orders. We are very happy to have her join our team. Welcome Karen, from all the Dr. Shrink staff!
Tag: wrapping
ShrinkWrap U Goes International
ShrinkWrap U is teaching people how to shrink wrap around the globe! Earlier this month the first ever international ShrinkWrap U was held in Romania by Mihai Tanase at Nautic Experts SRL. Dr. Shrink is extremely proud of Nautic Experts SRL for the great accomplishment they have achieved by hosting their first SWU!
The class was set up a little differently from the format that is used at the Dr. Shrink warehouse. The Romanian ShrinkWrap U training was held in Ploiesti (Prahova county, near Bucharest). The class was scheduled for two days (instead of just one full day as it is done in Manistee) on 11-12th of October. The class took place at the headquarters of Modpack Company who is a new dealer for Dr. Shrink products. There were four total participants, all of who work for Modpack.
The first day of the training was divided in two parts. Theoretical presentation of all Dr. Shrink’s products, safety procedures and business startup tips were in the first part of the day. The second half of the day was full of live demonstrations of shrink wrapping different pieces of equipment.
The second day was examination day. The students were asked to prepare and shrink wrap a piece of equipment for shipping, while explaining each step of procedure they made. All shrink wrapping had to be done within an hour and a half time frame. This is an extremely useful way of showing what you learned by not only performing it, but being able to explain how and why it was done as well. At the end of the session all four participants received diplomas attesting they successfully graduated the training.
Take a look at a couple pictures taken from the class when the students were receiving their ShrinkWrap U diplomas and getting recognition from Mihai. If you have any questions about ShrinkWrap U, please contact Dr. Shrink at 800-968-5147 or atdrshrink@dr-shrink.com.
Dr. Shrink Joins the MIAF
Florida, known as the Sunshine State, could be re-dubbed as the Boating State. It is full of marinas, yacht dealerships, yacht clubs, and of course boats – a lot of boats. It comes as no surprise Dr. Shrink strives to work with the marine oriented businesses of Florida and be their premium shrink wrap and accessories supplier. While we currently work closely with a number of marinas, dealers, and installers in the Sunshine State, there is always room for fresh ideas and resources. In an effort to support our existing customers and seek out new opportunities; we are proud to announce our membership into the Marine Industries Association of Florida (MIAF)!
The Marine Industries Association of Florida’s purpose is to:
- Promote social activities and education between its members
- To exchange ideas on promotion and sales of their products and services
- To foster and promote boating in Florida
- To aid and assist in the proposal and adoption of suitable laws and regulations relating to boats and boating
- To aid, assist or conduct displays of boats, equipment and allied products and services
Dr. Shrink’s goal is to exhibit the advantages of shrink wrap in front of the whole marine community and open up new application avenues. Our involvement with the MIAF will help achieve this goal. Using the MIAF as a resource, Dr. Shrink will continue to reach out to new and existing businesses with premium products and excellent service, and bring new shrink wrapping ideas and opportunity to the table.
For more information about the Marine Industries Association of Florida, you can visit their website at https://www.boatflorida.org.
If you have any questions or comments about Dr. Shrink, Inc. or our products and services. Please call 800-968-5147 or email drshrink@dr-shrink.com.
Dr. Shrink’s Recent Accomplishments
We here at Dr. Shrink have always prided ourselves on our premium products, excellent customer service, and our loyal customers that help make Dr. Shrink the successful company we are today. We wanted to take the time to mention some recent success that we have achieved. A couple weeks ago (late August 2011), Dr. Shrink was included on the 2011 Inc. Magazine: Inc. 5000 List! This list is an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies in the US. Dr. Shrink is now among past Inc. 5000 members such as: Microsoft, Intuit, Papa John’s, and E-Trade along with many others. This is a huge honor and accomplishment for Dr. Shrink and we hope this will be the first of many. You can see our Inc. 5000 ranking here:https://www.inc.com/inc5000/profile/dr-shrink, and our press release on globenewswire.com here:https://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=231951.
More recently, Dr. Shrink submitted an entry into the Wall Street Journal’s “Small Business, Big Innovation” contest. The entry had to be an article written about how we overcame the recent recession with an innovative idea. We are very proud to announce that our entry was accepted and Dr. Shrink is in the running for this contest! The article entered is currently online on the Wall Street Journal’s website and people can vote for the stories they like the best. Once voting is complete, the top 10 stories will be announced and go into the final round where a panel of judges will select the winner. You can view the written article and cast your votes for Dr. Shrink by following this link,https://blogs.wsj.com/biginnovation/2011/09/09/dr-shrink-inc/. Please vote for us!
When speaking about these accomplishments, no one could be happier than Dr. Shrink’s President and CEO Mike Stenberg. Mike states, “Thanks to the hard work of our team at Dr. Shrink, Inc. we have been able to grow and expand into new shrink wrapping fields and have been recognized by both the Inc. 5000 and Wall Street Journal for our efforts. Not only am I proud of the great team that we have here, but thankful for every single customer that works with us. Without them, we would have never reached these amazing achievements. For that, I would like to say thank you. We will continue to bring our customers the outstanding service and premium products they have come to expect from Dr. Shrink, while always looking for new ways to improve.”
We have made some outstanding accomplishments in these past couple months and our customers have made this possible for us. We are eternally grateful for each and every person that gives us a call, sends us a fax, or shoots us an email. Thank you from the entire Dr. Shrink Team for helping us earn these amazing accolades!
“Rip the Wrap” Video Contest
If you are a current Dr. Shrink customer, you know just how strong and durable our premium shrink wrap is with varieties coming in 6 to 12 mil thick. Some of you may not have used or even felt our thickest 12 mil material, so in order to have a little fun showing off just how strong this material is, we are running a “Rip the Wrap” video contest! In order to participate in this contest, you will need to videotape yourself “ripping the wrap” from start to finish (or at least trying). Here is a complete list of all rules and requirements of the contest:
- Call our office or email sales@dr-shrink.com with your name and shipping address to request your 24″ x 24″ sample piece of 12 mil.
- Your video MUST begin with stating your name and zooming in on all four sides of the sample piece in order to ensure no slits or cuts have been made.
- Wrap must only be ripped with bare hands—use of any tools, pliers, etc. will be immediately disqualified.
- Entire length of sample piece must be ripped.
- Video must be saved in an AVI, WMV, QuickTime, MOV or MPEG4 format and emailed to sales@dr-shrink.com to enter.
- Contest runs the entire month of August– starting 8 AM EST August 1st and running to 5 PM EST August 31st (Please consider ship time of receiving the sample, videotaping, and video editing/uploading).
If you think you don’t have the technology to upload a video, think again! Most cell phones have the capability to record video footage which can be uploaded to YouTube. If you can’t email your video because the file size is too big, you can easily upload your video to YouTube and email us the link instead. We want everyone to give it a shot; fancy video camera, cell phone video, anyway you can get the footage, we want to see it!
ANY participants who enter a video TRYING to “Rip the Wrap” will win a free roll of 4″ Heat Shrink Tape and anyone who can SUCCESSFULLY “Rip the Wrap” will win a $25 credit towards any Dr. Shrink product(s). We are excited to see everyone’s efforts to RIP THE WRAP.
**By submittal of your video, you give all property rights of the video to Dr. Shrink, Inc.**
Proactive Steps to Better Warehouse Efficiency
Dr. Shrink contacted the Supply Chain Management Department at Michigan State University, the number 2 program in the nation behind MIT, to come in and audit the efficiency of our warehouse. Brad Cook, an adjunct professor, audited the SKU performance as well as the overall operation of the warehouse over several days. He was surprised at the current efficiency of Dr. Shrink’s 60,000 square foot warehouse, especially with only having three full time warehouse employees, but there is always room for improvement.
Based on his findings, a 3-phase plan was suggested. Phase 1 is immediate improvements over a short term. These improvements are almost exclusively re-arranging the current rack system and product placement. Warehouse Manager Evan Jensen states, “One slight change can make an enormous difference. Instead of organizing products by size for spacing reasons, we now have products strategically placed by order frequency. This change in organization of our products has already made us more efficient when packing orders.”
Evan continued, “Also as Brad suggested, by rearranging current racking, we’ve also about doubled our capacity for order staging. That means more orders are boxed, packed and/or skidded plenty of time in advance and ready when the shipping companies come for pick-up.” Phases 2 and 3 will involve updated software for a warehouse management system and long-term plans for expansion. That being said we are always looking for ways to help serve our customers better. Through these short and long term changes, we are still focused on staying as efficient as possible. We pride ourselves in getting our customers’ orders out to them as fast as possible, and these changes will only help us to continue achieving that goal.
Shrinking the Recession
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.
Dr. Shrink Benefit Golf Scramble
Dr. Shrink has always been a company that cares about people and the community that we reside in. When we heard that there was an organization in our community (Love INC of Manistee) that needed help raising money to continue their charity efforts with local families, Dr. Shrink stepped up to the plate to lend a hand. With the beautiful Manistee National Golf Course & Resort just down the road, it made sense to hold a benefit golf outing for Love INC.
Love INC is a non-profit organization that has helped thousands of people in the Manistee and Benzie counties every year. Whether it be food, clothing, shelter, life skill classes, or emergency relief; Love INC puts forth many resources to help people in need. With that being said, funding for such programs plays an enormous role in helping the people and families who do receive these aids. In order to continue to offer these and other programs to the people who need them, Love INC is trying to raise money to continue to offer them. Dr. Shrink has teamed up with Love INC to bring a community together and help to make sure these programs stay in place.
This event is for anyone that wants to support Love INC or who just wants to play a round of golf on an amazing course for a great cause. The Dr. Shrink staff will be participating in this event and we encourage our customers to come out and join us. Dr. Shrink, Inc. President and CEO Mike Stenberg wanted to personally invite our customers to come and join us saying, “It would be a pleasure seeing all of our customers and business friends at our first annual charity golf tournament for Love, INC. We promise a great time while benefiting Love, INC and their caring agenda. So far we have customers coming from as far away as Rhode Island, New York, Maryland and Minnesota. Come on up to beautiful Manistee, MI and have some fun.” In addition to many other great prizes, there will be an exclusive “Dr. Shrink Customer Only” prize raffle at the end of the event for all of our customers that participate. One lucky Dr. Shrink customer will receive new Shrinkfast 998 Heat Tool Kit!
Dr. Shrink and Love INC would like to thank the following sponsors:
Bob’s Roofing
Callesen & Associates
Jeff Petroski of the Comfort Center
Daniel D. Laskey Company, PC
Exit Great Lakes Reality
Kendra C. Thompson Architects, PC
Manistee Ford
Mary Sturdevant Agency State Farm Insurance
MS Creative
Muffler Man of Manistee
North Shore Marine & RV
Northwestern Bank
Olsen’s Food Store
Pamela’s Interior Design & Construction
Sports Ink
Lucky Lizard Awards & Gifts
West Shore Bank
Yates Chevrolet & Cadillac
Smeltzer & Sons Photography
Members Credit Union
Go With the Flow Solutions
Paco Theiscn
Lloyd Henry’s
Paul Vandermaas of Las-Drop
Manistee National Golf & Resort
102.7 WMOM FM Radio
91.1 The Promise FM Radio
Manistee News Advocate
Manistee Chamber of Commerce
Ludington Daily News
And all the everyone who will be participating in this event!
For complete details, please see the flyer above. For any questions or to sign up for this event, contact Travis at 231-723-2685 or email him attravis@dr-shrink.com.
New Dr. Shrink Disaster Shelters Donated to Japan
Feelings of compassion and sympathy are expressed by people all over the globe when they hear of natural disasters causing devastation and destruction in people’s lives. After a natural disaster strikes, people and families who are affected are left in great need of essentials in order to survive. Whether it be a fire, earthquake, flood, tsunami, tornado, or hurricane; shelter is always a number one priority once the disaster has struck. It is understood that in the midst of a disaster the need for a quick, reliable, and durable shelter is a necessity. Dr. Shrink President Mike Stenberg was one of the many people who felt there had to be something he or his company could do whenever a natural disaster struck. The idea to create a disaster shelter out of shrink wrap was born. Dr. Shrink (in collaboration with Camcar Plastics and Transhield) is proud to now introduce our new, ready-to-assemble Disaster Shelter.
Our Disaster Shelters are designed to be lightweight and easy to assemble in order to offer the fastest and most efficient form of shelter and protection from the harsh elements of a passing storm/disaster. The skeleton of the shelter is constructed of PVC piping which creates the frame. The structure is lightweight yet durable enough to withstand wind gusts. The cover is made from our premium 10-mil shrink wrap material with an attachable cloth-lined, waterproof floor. Sewn-in zipper screen windows and pre-installed vents keep fresh air circulating and the shelter ventilated.
Finalizations for the Disaster Shelters came just in time in order to help accommodate the growing need for emergency relief shelters in Japan. Mike was extremely glad to know there was something Dr. Shrink could offer to the relief effort of this disaster. Dr. Shrink has extended a hand to the people of Japan by donating 50 of our Disaster Shelters to the small village of Rikuzen Tekada, the most impacted zone of the 2011 tsunami and earthquake. (Click here for recent articles published on our donation: https://exm.nr/imTefe, https://bit.ly/jIC3GJ, &https://bit.ly/mRxAAC ). The tents should supply the only known standing shelters to the region at this time.
If you have any questions about Dr. Shrink’s new Disaster Shelters, please contact us at 231-723-2685 or by email at sales@dr-shrink.com.
Dr. Shrink Joins the Scaffolding Industry Association
Shrink wrap is rapidly becoming the new face of protection in a number of different industries. It is no surprise that scaffolding and containment is quickly rising on the list of industries that reaps the benefits of shrink wrap protection. Dr. Shrink is committed to offering the best protection to the scaffolding industry through the best shrink wrap products on the market today. To show our commitment, pledge, and assurance of offering only premium products, Dr. Shrink is proud to announce that we are a new member of the Scaffolding Industry Association (SIA). The SIA has many admirable goals currently in place and Dr. Shrink has climbed on board in order to help and reach the following:
- Increase public awareness of technological advances in the scaffold industry with regard to its products, services and practices. Raise visibility of the industry. Promote a professional image of the industry.
- Improve the working relationship between manufacturers, dealers, users, and other interested parties. Promote SIA Membership to all individuals and firms who manufacture, sell, rent, lease or use access, scaffolding, shoring and forming equipment, and related products and services.
To further promote and demonstrate the protection shrink wrap brings to the scaffolding industry, Dr. Shrink is scheduled to exhibit at the 2011 SIA Annual Convention and Exhibition in Minneapolis, Minnesota July 17th – 20th. Above picture shows Dr. Shrink CEO & Founder, Mike Stenberg with SIA Board Directors, Laurie Weber and Elouise Schultz.
If you have any questions about shrink wrap and how it can help protect your next scaffolding project, contact us at 231-723-2685 or atsales@dr-shrink.com.
