Sunday, March 10, 2013

Downtown Nanaimo's Secrets of Success

 Impact Visual Communications

Mike Thompson, President of Impact Visual Communications located at 25 Cavan Street in Nanaimo sat down with the DNBIA on January 17, 2013 to share with us his thoughts on what has led to twenty years of success in Nanaimo. He is pictured here with his best friend Winston, a really smart shepherd-heeler cross, and his favourite new toy his “Impact” orange Jeep.

DNBIA: How long have you been in business?
MIKE: It’s been twenty years. I came to Nanaimo in 1993 and started my business in a downtown apartment.

DNBIA: What brought you to Nanaimo?
MIKE: Well, prior to coming here, I had spent my entire career in retail and I had been running a large retail store in Calgary, but following my divorce, I decided to move. I spent my teenage years in West Vancouver and I loved the coast. My parents had recently relocated to Comox and after the death of my sister, I visited them frequently, so I was up and down the Island all the time. I quickly realized that Nanaimo was the hub of the island and I felt it was a good place to start a business.

DNBIA: Who or what motivated you to start the business?
MIKE:  I have a degree in business and I have always had a really strong background in marketing and messaging. I was always able to get my point across in an ad, so I started out working for MinuteMen Press doing design and sales work. In my first year here I would go out, buy a newspaper and redo people’s ads and then go and sell them to them.
Then I met John Smart, who owned Baron’s Business Centre and we started selling feature sheets for realtors, it was a massive part of our business.  John was instrumental in kicking my butt and when business really started growing and I needed help he talked me into hiring Giovanna Pichel Brassens. When John sold his building we had to move because I couldn’t afford to buy it and we moved to the Cienar building. It only had three offices, so we ended up knocking out walls and over the years we kept growing with the realty work, and then I got my own printer. We were one of the first people in town to do digital printing, so we were doing a lot of digital business cards and we kept growing until we outgrew that space and we relocated here.


DNBIA: Why downtown?
MIKE: We were more of an agency at that time and downtown sounded right. Clients could come from Vancouver and walk to the building. It was about downtown advertising and marketing. When we moved here in 2008, the building was pretty ugly, the roof was full of holes, the economy had tanked, our timing couldn’t have been worse, but it worked out well for us.

DNBIA: How do you feel about the economy downtown now?
MIKE: I feel pretty positive. People are being thrifty. Right or wrong, when the economy slows down people always become thriftier with their marketing and advertising budget. But over time we evolved our business model and now we are more involved in web development and it is doing really well for us.

DNBIA: Can you give us a short description of your business?
MIKE: We are still an agency to some extent, but we are more segmented now. We are a full service company. We take on jobs we can do in house. We can do your design work, print your products and do your web sites.

DNBIA: What are you best known for and why?
MIKE:  Hmmm I don’t know, that’s not an easy question. Printing, web development and graphic design are the three pillars of our business. Many people who come to us for one service don’t always realize that we do the others. But I would have to say designing has always been the hallmark of our business.

DNBIA: What sets your business aside from others in the field?
MIKE: We are a lot deeper, we do high end quality design work and printing and we have the staff. All of our designers have a degree in design; in fact the joke around here is I am the only one who doesn’t have a design degree. The same with our web developers; we have programmers and designers, they are all trained professionals and it shows in our work.

DNBIA: Who are your customers?
MIKE: Small to medium businesses; local people who want their business to grow and  then our biggest customer, 7/11 Canada.  We do all of their point of purchase kits, banners and copy every month.  We have three staff just to service the 7/11 Canada account. Then we have our good solid Island customers like Enex fuels and Island West Coast Development; realtors or course; lots of small business customers. In fact the guy who does one set of business cards once a year is just as important to me as a big customer.

DNBIA: What geographic regions do you serve?
MIKE: Our business is mostly local and national; internationally not enough to mention, we get customers out of the States occasionally. Of course anyone can find you online now. In fact we don’t even need the large space we have now because people can work from home. I am only here in the office until noon every day.

DNBIA: Has technology changed the way you do business?
MIKE: My iPhone has changed the way I do business.  It‘s given me so much freedom. In fact, I have the cheesiest desk in the whole place. I am mobile now and I love it because it allows me time to go back to my passion which is photography and it lets me travel.  Another big thing is Facebook – anyone who thinks Facebook doesn’t change how you do business, come see me, I can educate them. We have a huge fan base and we didn’t buy our fans.
Last year I was ill and away lot and it made me rethink some of my decisions. We now have a CEO in place, Carson McPherson who is fantastic and is bringing in new business. The employees here are great, so the more they do, the more freedom I get. I am turning sixty this year and I am trying to retire. In the afternoons I focus on the photography side of our business.  I do a lot of travel with my photography. It was my passion years ago and it still is, I just didn’t have time then, and I bought myself a a jeep to get around the mountains with to take my pictures.

DNBIA: What keeps your customers coming back?
MIKE: Customer service.  Everyone claims its customer service, but very few people provide it. You must put the customer ahead of yourself. Doing the extra that needs to be done and not worrying solely about your bottom line but making the customer happy. If you are simply meeting expectations; then you are not going to survive in business. Everyone can meet expectations, it’s giving customers more than they paid for that makes you a superstar.  In fact, we have all our sales staff here read Raving Fans: by Ken Blanchard, everyone should read it, it’s a good book.

DNBIA: Do you have an anecdote about the business that summarizes what you are all about?
MIKE:  I wouldn’t recommend it to others; I guess it would have to be about my work habits. People don’t believe me, but I gave up a hunk of my life to build Impact. In the beginning I was coming in at 2:00 a.m.  I would come to work and be here all week without going home. Often I would fall asleep in my chair while the printer was running. I ran the printer 24 hours a day. Of course printers were much slower back then, but when a job would finish, I would wake up and stagger over and set another one. When I hired Gio, I gave her my salary and lived off of my Visa.  I have had a total commitment to the business and the vision of where I wanted it to go. In my first couple of years I said I have to do a million dollar in business – and we did it in two years. Do I recommend it? No, I am single and my best friend is a dog and I am just getting over health issues.

DNBIA: It sounds like personal sacrifice is a big part of your make up?
MIKE: I have always had a strong work ethic and I wanted it to succeed.

DNBIA: How many employees do you have?
MIKE: I think about 23 or 24, but we have had as many as 30.

DNBIA: What advice would you give to a new business starting out in downtown Nanaimo?
MIKE: Get to know your neighbour; get to know your BIA; get to know your Chamber of Commerce. It would depend on the kind of business you have but downtown really is a community of people you can do business with.  So getting to know your neighbour is critical.

DNBIA: How important is it to you to use the other services downtown?
MIKE: It’s really important to the staff, most of these folks don’t pack lunches, they like having restaurants to go to and when the designers are really busy they eat at their desk. They like to go out after work. It’s a great spot to be.

DNBIA: What about your business makes you the most proud
MIKE: The employees. I take pride in knowing I built this family. Gio I think was the employee who was with us the longest, but now I guess its Chelsea Hamre. Carol Roworth who recently retired was with me for 14 years. We have had a few people retire from here.  Renee Uvanile came to work here as a work experience student in grade 11 and he never went away. He is a partner and Print Manager now. I don’t think of the employees here so much as staff because I take a lot of fatherly pride in these people. I’ve watched the progression of them coming out of school, getting married and having children.

DNBIA: Are there challenges to having a business downtown?
MIKE: Well, I don’t always agree with the parking laws, but I do understand where they are coming from, but there is room for change. The biggest challenge still is getting people to understand that the downtown community is great and it’s safe. Ten years after the cleanup of downtown and we still struggle to get people to come downtown. I love it here.  I take my dog Winston down to Swy- a-lana Lagoon every day. I always feel safe. It’s about all about changing people’s perceptions and that can be really difficult. Thankfully, it doesn’t affect our business.

allvoices

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