- March 28, 2024
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Want to make your customers feel special? Build them a website of their own.
That's what Hamilton's Uniforms does for some of its best customers. Instead of making customers order through its own website, Hamilton's builds unique sites just for them.
The idea came about earlier this year while owner Hank Porterfield was brainstorming with his sales manager, Mike Harden. Customers such as Retina Consultants and Hope Hospice now order their uniforms through specially designed websites that carry the inventory of uniforms they need.
“We now have four up and running and three or four more that we're working on,” says Porterfield.
But it wasn't cheap. “The first site cost us $8,000,” says Porterfield. “We learned a lot from that.”
Porterfield expects the cost of building sites for customers will decline as the company gets more efficient. “We brought in another person as an IT person,” he says. “That now allows us to expand to additional sites without the strain and pain of the first couple.”
Despite the additional expense, Porterfield says the sites could break even after a year. More importantly, it's a great sales tool. “The ability for us to set ourselves apart is worth the cost of doing separate sites,” he says.