Big Printing T-Shirt Company streamlines customer order process, grows revenue to $2 million a year, and boosts efficiency by 150% with Smartsheet

Big Printing T-Shirt Company is a California-based streetwear company that designs and manufactures trendy, colorful athletic wear, zip sweatshirts, and organic T shirts for global customers. The company specializes in apparel customization featuring silk screen, embroidery, heat transfer, and digital printing. Founded in 2002, Big Printing has a vision of bringing dynamic, bold, youthful designs to everyday consumers and enterprises.

Big Printing uses Smartsheet software to manage everything from internal projects to customer orders to marketing and social media initiatives.  “Smartsheet helps us manage our project flow across our entire company, and it helps us manage our production line as a whole,” says Kesney Muhammad, co-owner and CFO of Big Printing T-Shirt Company. “Most of our product design and ordering is done internally through different departments, and Smartsheet manages it all for us.” 

For the past 20 years, Big Printing has seen its business increase steadily, growing an average of 10-15 percent annually since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. As growth continued, the company struggled to easily manage projects with its existing solution, a combination of spreadsheet software and email. “Our entire production schedule was a spreadsheet, with a column for a customer’s order number, how many items they ordered, and what department was doing the printing. It was a very cumbersome way to organize everything,” says Dawaud Muhammad, co-owner and head of operations at Big Printing T-Shirt Company. “Each department had their own spreadsheet and would manually enter all the data and check off each project when completed. There wasn’t really a way to get updated data or visibility into the process, other than emailing each department.”

Using Smartsheet to manage customer orders, inventory, and social media 

After searching for different project management software tools that could improve visibility and efficiency, Big Printing discovered Smartsheet. “When Smartsheet popped up during the search, I was really surprised at all the functionality it offered, from integration with our existing tools to customization and dashboards,” Dawaud Muhammad says. “Smartsheet was like a whole new world for us, and we couldn’t wait to adopt it.”

Big Printing now uses Smartsheet to centrally manage all customer orders. For example, when a customer requests a shirt package estimate through the Big Printing Instagram account, Big Printing sends the customer a link to a Smartsheet form to fill out order details. Once the form is submitted, the details flow to the Big Printing sales department, which builds a customer account and sends a proposal to the customer. If the customer accepts the proposal and makes a payment, the order is exported into Smartsheet. At this point, Big Printing departments including art and production can begin work on the order, with the entire process tracked in Smartsheet and updated in real time as each department finishes its work on the order.

Big Printing has also integrated its third-party invoicing system with Smartsheet. “That system is not a great communicator with other technologies, but Smartsheet is what I’d call extroverted – it talks to everyone,” Dawaud Muhammad says. 

In addition to using Smartsheet for order management and invoice processing, Big Printing uses the solution to manage its social media-related marketing projects, such as behind-the-scenes footage showing the production of a customer apparel order. Big Printing also relies on Smartsheet reports to capture real-time project data from different departments and present it in a single view for all users.

“Our departments can each get a high-level view of specific projects and tasks for each day,” Dawaud Muhammad says. “It also helps us see if there’s a missing element from a customer order, such as a missing garment, and what the current status of that is.” 

Additionally, the company uses Smartsheet forms to collect information from customers via social media. “A lot of our customers use social media to ask us questions about our products in general, or to ask for proposals, so we use Smartsheet forms to gather that contact information in one place,” Kesney Muhammad says.

Finally, Big Printing is taking advantage of the Smartsheet mobile app to get immediate access to Smartsheet project data on the go. “I walk around with my tablet all day, going from department to department, and I can access the mobile app to see everything I need to about all our orders and projects,” says Dawaud Muhammad.

Better order visibility and stronger communication

By managing its entire workflow in Smartsheet, all Big Printing departments have better visibility into design and printing projects. “Previously, we couldn’t keep everything in sync and we had to send multiple emails and do constant revisions when a customer order changed,” says Dawaud Muhammad. “With Smartsheet, we have a single view of all the information we need, so we’ve eliminated the need to email people for updates. Everything we need is right at our fingertips.”

With better project visibility, Big Printing has improved internal and external communication. The company is communicating more effectively internally about orders and departmental responsibilities, for example, and it is also communicating more regularly with customers. “Smartsheet forms help us get customer requests or order changes quickly, and it lets customers clearly track the progress of their order, so there are fewer questions about the approval stage or overall order status,” says Kesney Muhammad.

A new way to gain customers and grow annual revenue

Big Printing can scale to keep pace with rapid yearly business growth by using Smartsheet to accelerate business through social media channels. For instance, when the company posts new content on Instagram, customers can quickly click a link on the post and go immediately to a Smartsheet form to find out more about costs or how to order a T-shirt printing package. Once they place an order, customers can upload their artwork and view a drop-down list detailing the steps in the order process.

“In 2022, we hit just over $2 million in revenue as a company, and Smartsheet was instrumental in getting us to that number,” says Kesney Muhammad. “It’s one thing to have a strong social media presence, but it’s another thing to actually figure out how to monetize social media and have a way to track that, and that's what Smartsheet does for us.”

In 2021, using Smartsheet forms, Big Printing gained 3,600 customer contacts it would have otherwise missed. Out of that number, the company converted around 32 percent to orders. In 2022, the company gained 1,400 new customer contacts through Smartsheet forms on social media, converted around 47 percent to new sales, with an average order of $1,150.

“To think there was so much potential revenue we were missing was really astonishing. This has led to substantial new sales for us, and it’s also given us a network to go back to when we have new marketing campaigns,” Kesney Muhammad says. “We had people follow us on social media for 10 years, and this year they’ve placed an order with us for the first time.”

A 150% increase in efficiency

With Smartsheet, Big Printing can operate its business much more efficiently. “We went from hella slow to hella fast with Smartsheet,” says Dawaud Muhammad. “We’re 150 percent more efficient, because we went from sticky notes and spreadsheet tasks to an actual platform that allows us to easily keep everything organized and in one place for all departments.” Now, the customer order process is seamless.

A customer can place an order, submit artwork, pay for the order, and receive the order without Dawaud or Kesney Muhammad needing to see it. “That was never the case before,” Kesney Muhammad says. “Smartsheet has moved us from being a mom and pop shop to a small business, and it is now helping us become a medium-sized business.”

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