How commonsku Transformed Ethan Dowie's Indigo Promotions

From his startup days working out of a supply closet to building a seven-figure promotional products business with prestigious clients like Google, Mac Cosmetics, and Zappos, Ethan Dowie's journey with Indigo Promotions demonstrates the transformative impact when using the right business tools!

During a recent webinar with Bobby Lehew, commonsku's Chief Content Officer, Ethan shared how commonskuhas been instrumental in his company's growth and success. 

Here's how commonsku helped transform his business, you can listen to the full chat or jump to the highlights below!

From Stone Age to Futuristic 2.0

Before commonsku, Ethan was cobbling together solutions with Google Docs for presentations and QuickBooks for sending purchase orders. The transition to an integrated platform was game-changing: "For me it's everything... It just allows us to grow with a lot less friction because we have a center point that's almost like our North Star for doing all of our day-to-day tasks."

Winning Clients with Professional Presentations

Perhaps the most impactful feature for Ethan has been commonsku's presentation capabilities: "This is by far my favorite feature on commonsku... This is where we're allowed to show and leverage our expertise."

The platform's presentation tools helped Indigo Promotions "bat outside of their range" - enabling a small startup to appear as professional and sophisticated as much larger competitors. This was crucial in landing high-profile clients like Google.

Streamlining Production

The production page has become the core of Indigo's operating system, allowing the team to stay coordinated on hundreds of projects simultaneously: "This has been so important for all of us to keep everybody in the loop on hundreds of projects... The production page is so important for us because when we're doing things properly and we have our production page report, which for my team is every Monday, we're all on the call and we're basically breaking down every project to each team member… It's been crucial to keeping mistakes down and preventing one from coming up."

Simplifying Shipping Logistics

A seemingly small feature that made a big difference was the shipping functionality: "When we would send tracking to a client, we would hyperlink it to FedEx or UPS, and we were basically doing the work of what this does now, but this new shipping feature allows us just to put in one name, one email, send it off... It keeps everybody in the loop and it saves us time."

Impressing Clients with Portals

The client portals provide Indigo's customers with a self-service experience that further elevates the company's professional image: "The stuff is simple enough for my client to say, what's that link? Click. They go into it and then they can really see exactly why we're next level and a good distributor because they're seeing all of this high tech technology that's actually easy to use and really self-explanatory."

Building a Scalable Team Structure

Ethan credits commonsku with helping him rethink his entire company structure after attending skucon and meeting other successful distributors. This restructuring allowed him to scale from a one-man operation to a team with specialized roles in sales and customer service.

For promotional products businesses looking to scale effectively in today's competitive marketplace, Ethan's experience demonstrates how the right technology platform can be the difference between stagnation and extraordinary growth - taking you from a supply closet startup to a seven-figure business with world-class clients!