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Momentum continues to overflow at Tervis Tumbler, the Venice-based insulated drinkware manufacturer.
Indeed, Black Friday and the ensuing holiday weekend was a projection-busting success. For example, sales at the company's retail store in Osprey, on U.S. 41 in south Sarasota County, increased 16% over Black Friday 2011, executives say. Website sales over the entire holiday weekend, meanwhile, were up 62% over 2011, Tervis CEO Pat Redmond tells Coffee Talk. Website traffic on Cyber Monday — the e-commerce answer to Black Friday — doubled the 2011 tally.
“That was just phenomenal,” says Redmond. “The holiday season has really surpassed our expectations.”
One lesson Redmond took from the strong early returns is preparation is an irreplaceable component of any good strategy. That was the tactic the firm used with online sales: It spent more than six months of the year, backed by a significant capital investment, improving the technical support system behind its website and e-commerce business.
“There was a push this year to make the website more robust,” Redmond says. “They did a great job with that, and it really paid off.”
Tervis has been one of Sarasota-Bradenton's best business success stories of the past decade, even before the holiday sales season. The company, with about 700 employees, has grown from $24 million in sales in 2006 to more than $100 million last year. It no longer discloses specific annual revenues.
A Tervis board member and onetime Jabil Circuit executive, Redmond was named CEO in February. He says the early part of the holiday shopping rush was so good he and his executive team spent the week after Thanksgiving revising year-end projections upward. “We're optimistic and hopeful,” about the rest of 2012, Redmond says. “But this big push has already been extremely gratifying.”
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