<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hello, Friends!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welcome to the initial blog post from our new Ask Fred Blog.\u00a0 To kick things off I thought I\u2019d give you a quick history on how we got here and where we hope to go next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1979, working out of my college dorm room in New York City, I unwittingly started on a journey that continues to this day.\u00a0 Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this would be my life.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I look back, it is to a time without custom logo shirts and apparel.\u00a0 \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great,\u201d I thought back then, \u201cif you could get the same quality polo as that ever-popular French Lacoste \u2018alligator\u2019 shirt, with any logo or design you wanted?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a whim, I placed an ad in the back of The New Yorker Magazine.\u00a0 When the phone started to ring (to the great aggravation of my roommate) I placed a few more ads in places like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, a few of the airline magazines and some of the Ivy League Alumni Magazines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBetter than Lacoste or Ralph Lauren!\u201d the ads proclaimed.\u00a0 \u201cGet the same great quality shirt with YOUR logo instead of theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was off and running!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I liked school but couldn\u2019t wait to get on with life.\u00a0 Having struck out in my halfhearted job search (it seemed like the responsible thing to do) my lack of employment gave me the excuse to give this shirt thing a try for a while and see how far I could get with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I bootstrapped in New York for about 15 years, moving from Manhattan, to Queens, to Brooklyn, always managing to be just resourceful enough to keep the lights on.\u00a0 In January 1995 I got into a fight with my Landlord in Brooklyn (no heat), lost and was evicted. February of that same year I moved South to Wilmington North Carolina looking for a fresh start in a new environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a good move for us.\u00a0 The cost of living was low and the weather was great.\u00a0 We were closer to our major suppliers, and the people were hard working, and grateful for the career opportunities.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today we are still in the same location we originally moved to but have expanded into over 100,000 square feet of converted factory space where we process hundreds of orders, and ship several thousand custom logo, embroidered and printed shirts, hats, bags, etc. a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our history has been one of slow and steady growth, dotted by our fair share of missteps, lucky breaks and a few good decisions.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marketing directly to our customers (no middle-men!) was a good decision.\u00a0 Moving to North Carolina was a good decision.\u00a0 Getting on the Internet early was a good decision. And building a business based on quality products and customer service was a good decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My biggest revelation, however, came in 2014 as we were struggling to restart growth after the recession, and people stopped reading and looking at newspapers, magazines and catalogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was when I realized what I really wanted to do was build a truly great company.\u00a0 As I worked to understand how to do that, I came to understand that in a truly great company, there are no weak links.\u00a0 Working with my team we identified the 4 essential qualities of all great employees, the Four P\u2019s, and started the hard work of building a company around those ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We determined that to be a great employee a person has to be Productive<\/strong> (good at their job), Positive<\/strong> (actively lift up people around them with their positive energy), Principled<\/strong> (treat EVERYONE <\/strong>the way they want to be treated) and Proactive <\/strong>(always striving for improvement and growth).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perfect<\/strong> is not one of the 4 P\u2019s.\u00a0 People have strong P\u2019s and weaker ones.\u00a0 Some come as naturally as breathing.\u00a0 Others can be a real struggle. If you want to be great employee, however, you need all four and there can be no exceptions to that for the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years into what we call TGP \u2013 The Greatness Project<\/strong> \u2013 we see improvement and growth all around us.\u00a0 We are working hard, and much of what we must do is difficult, but our energy is great, and we are united in pursuit of greatness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of you who have been with us for a while we appreciate the support and opportunity.\u00a0 I think we have always been good.\u00a0 I hope you see us getting better.\u00a0 To those of you who are new, welcome aboard.\u00a0 Let\u2019s grow towards greatness together.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n To anyone considering giving us a try, Trust The Queen.\u00a0 You won\u2019t be disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Questions, comments, thoughts?\u00a0 askfred@queensboro.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello, Friends! Welcome to the initial blog post from our new Ask Fred Blog.\u00a0 To kick things off I thought I\u2019d give you a quick history on how we got here and where we hope to go next. In 1979, working out of my college dorm room in New York City, I unwittingly started on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":78,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}