Testimonial from Underdog Apparel

What inspired you to connect with Jacqueline and the IMEC team? And what’s that been like for you guys?

John LaRoy  00:08

Yeah, so I mean, another thing kind of like my dad always said is like when I was applying for jobs like tell the world right so and we didn’t do a good job of telling the world what we do. And that was a really big core focus for us for our 2023 goals for our leadership team is we need to be better on social we need to be better at marketing. We need to have marketing we haven’t I mean, we’ve The fortunate thing is we haven’t spent $1 on marketing at all, you know, up until about a month ago when we first started doing a couple campaigns. So you really look at it as an advantage, you know, where we’re able to have pretty consistent solid year over year growth without kind of turn on the floodgates, right? So Dave Musgrave is a regional director out of IMEC again kind of stars align reached out to me via email Hey, we got this grant program. Are you interested? I’m always wary of those emails are still getting ERC emails and I’m like that Yeah. EVP is like what the hell but anyhow, different story. I’m like, come on in. And he came in saw the place I think you would qualify for, you know, there’s there’s 15 I think different like areas and five different silos of what you could look at. And we sat down with our leadership team, we looked at, ironically Lean process improvement, which we’re actually doing right now with a with a lean process consultant, we hired. We looked at the marketing aspect, we looked at automation. So we decided on marketing collectively as a team. And it’s been it’s been great with Kurt, Kurt and his team have been absolutely phenomenal. Derek DB and Didi working together on a weekly basis to really drive things forward, redo our website, work on the SEO channels do the customer journey experience. We’ve been we’ve been thrilled and very thankful for the opportunity. Yeah, it’s

Jaclyn Kolodziej  01:54

been great to get to know you guys and work with you. So IMEC is the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center. Our goal is to serve all types of Illinois manufacturers with anything from quality ISO certs lean growth, so I’m with these guys working through a big growth journey. They’re all in on their SEO program. We’re really hoping to see a drive some positive results. And all of that was brought to the table through cook County’s manufacturing reinvented grant initiative that’s going on currently. So this partnerships great working with Kurt and his team working with these guys at a payroll teaming up with Cook County and IMEC is a win win I

love that it’s just so amazing to see everything that I’m doing and contributing to so many manufacturers Illinois and working with Curt you know, I’ve been able to see and experience that firsthand and it’s just really remarkable what you guys have been doing and how you’re American manufacturing we love it So Curt I’d love to turn it over to you what’s it been like for you working with underdog?

Curt Anderson

Yeah, so has it been doing well? Man it’s like this hour is fine by so I’m gonna be like they’re super busy. And there’s a lot of you know, a lot happening here. So I’m gonna be mindful of everybody’s time. But Jacqueline, first off, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this incredible opportunity. Thank you for connecting us with the amazing, incredible team here at underdog apparel. And just what an honor and privilege it is just to get to know these guys. And like you said David and we just love this weekend and week out like getting underneath. There’s American Marriott manufacturing renaissance and like you know the corner you know, you and I saw it in Alaska two weeks ago. You know, shop by shop manufacturer by manufacturer. We’re here in Chicago this week. So it doesn’t matter what state you’re in. And so speaking of whatever state you’re in, there is an MEP near you. Manufacturing Extension Partnership. So the I’d say the folks in Illinois are very blessed to have iMac they are doing ratable work with manufacturers up and down the state here and as in you know, Chicagoland just doing wonderful work and Jacqueline, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. Join us today.