Wearing your love for MasterCast TM on your shirt sleeves?

July 2 2008 was workday at ACMA. At 8am sharp, I was warmly welcomed by Patti Washburn and her staff and we got right to work.

On the way back, a fifty something young man nestled himself in the seat next to me. It was obvious that he worked for AMD, the microprocessor people that at times have made INTEL run a little faster. Indeed, Richard from AMD was sporting his company's logo on his briefcase, shirt pocket and on a cap he held in his hand.

After takeoff, he turned to me and, after the usual introductions, suggested that I must be working for a large corporation. Not knowing what exactly to think, I asked him why he felt that way.

"Well", he said, "your shirt pocket mentions your company name and logo, and that tells me you have guys got "IT". Our research has shown us that our customers view a shirt cum logo as the sign of a company that means business and that will take care of their customers".

He proceeded to tell how companies that were proud enough to display their name "on their short sleeve" could ill afford to be recognized in public and to be servicing their customers poorly at the same time.

Learning from this free advice, we are going to take this a step further. Currently, all staff is encouraged to have polo shirts or dress shirts embroidered at the local Hometreads store at Walmart. They provide the shirt they like to wear, Intl. Marble Industries, Inc pays the $8 for the embroidery.

We needed little incentive to return to the store, have the Mastercast Engineered Composites logo digitized and added to our shirts.

Let's do the math: there are over 1,000 Mastercast producers in the US; they employ on average 5 "front office" people; that would translate 5,000 logos leaving impressions 8-10 hours a day, not only at the office but also wherever you go on your lunch break and while running errands on the way home: the grocery store, the bank, the nail salon, etc... Not a bad investment.

Now let's all get to work to locate the 80% that have not yet bought into the concept, show the values of the ICPA and how we are working hard on positioning our product and brand name for the years to come.

Dirk De Vuyst

ICPA President
Intl Marble Industries, Inc
304 Bell Park Drive
Woodstock GA 30188
tel 770 928 2252 ext 223
fax 770 874 7540