MAY 2020 | ISSUE NO. 4
SILVER LININGS By Brad Cates
As we work to maintain social distancing and stay close to you in a digital environment, we’re focused on building our silver linings playbook on a near daily basis. Our latest move—designed to keep Sarreid ahead of the curve and help you drive business—is the unveiling of our brand new, branded Sarreid Studio. Here at Sarreid, we are exceptionally blessed to have a talented videographer on staff, as well as another team member who actually teaches the art of photography, and both these individuals are backed by an IT expert tasked with implementing our comprehensive digital strategy. These great internal resources have enabled us to move quickly to answer the increasing need for Zoom meetings to introduce new products coupled with appropriate sales training. One side of our new Sarreid Studio is a dedicated space for meetings. We’re all challenged by working in this new, virtual environment, and we’re all going to get better at it, but we want to be the first to have a place where we can invite dealers and designers to talk with us about specific product, provide supplemental training and build relationships. Have you ever met your customer service person face-to-face? You’re about to! Better still, we’ve divided our Sarreid Studio in half. The other side is devoted to photography, which as our customers step up their social media efforts to connect with consumers and clients, has never been more important. We’ve made investments in the right equipment, from cameras to lighting, and thanks to our onboard talent, we’re getting better and better at turning out effective product shots and lifestyle fare. Our goal is to have every SKU in the line photographed, and we’re shooting every product we open up, not only taking standard still photos, but also video, because we know live-action garners more eyeballs on social channels
and your digital marketing efforts. I will admit it is a big undertaking to un-box, photograph, and video 2,000 SKUs, but we’re making it happen one bestseller at a time, continually updating our eCat program multiple times a day. At the same time, we’re not being shy about adding exceptional new products to the line-up. The purchase orders we are placing this week are not just for samples either; we’re ordering quantities of everything because we want to be prepared and instock not only when the next Market happens, but when our next virtual meeting with you happens. In other news this month, we’re linking everything in our new digital catalog to our website, so that you can click on any item and go directly to that portion of the website to find all the in-depth info you need, from detailed drawings to multiple beauty shots. And, we’re moving quickly to create a passwordsecure area on the site where all of our photos and video will live to make it easy for you to download and build content promoting your business. Suffice it to say, there is definitely more than one silver lining stored in Sarreid’s Cloud!