Today we’d like to introduce you to Wendy Drouin.
Wendy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
In 2003, I was working as a sales rep for Southwestern Bell (currently AT&T) and my husband was in school looking to change careers. We personally knew the founders of J. Harding & Co and knew they were looking to sell their business.
It was Memorial Day weekend that year and we had taken our 2-year-old daughter to the bay house. One of my client’s network went down. They had an STN ring or a Self Healing Transport Network that was supposed to keep their Houston office connected to their offices in Canada and England. Without the network being operational their other locations could not open on Monday, which wasn’t a holiday in either of those countries. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the joy of trying to get something fixed with the phone company but try fixing a major circuit on a holiday weekend when all of the most experienced technicians are on vacation.
Needless to say, I spent all weekend walking around the yard on the phone trying to get someone to help my customer. I made it to the VP of operations office before we finally were able to pull someone in to fix the circuit. By Monday, they were up and operational. I was finishing up calls to my client and the office when I turned around and saw my 2-year-old… my little girl… walking behind me with a flip-flop on her shoulder copying her mother who had just spent most of their family time together on the phone. I looked at my husband and said, “do you think there’s ever been a t-shirt emergency that would take me away from my family?” It kind of broke my heart.
It was all we could talk about over the next few weeks. My husband, Jason, had worked at J. Harding & Co. after high school. We knew it was a profitable company and located in a great part of town. After looking over the numbers and making some hard decisions, we took possession of the company on September 1, 2013. It had its ups and downs, but now almost 15 years later, we’ve gone from 7 employees to 13 and are just shy of doubling its annual revenue.
In the meantime, we had another daughter (2004) and we’ve been able to take the time we’ve needed to be there as best we could for both girls. We didn’t miss field trips or sports events, we volunteered at school, and we could run out when we get the calls that they needed something. Our oldest is now graduating high school and headed off to college in the fall and our youngest will be entering 8th grade.
Has it been a smooth road?
By no means has it been smooth. As I’m sure is the case with many small business owners, we’ve struggled with employee issues, maintenance issues, cash flow… you name it. Owning a business and having a family with young children has been difficult. While our story is keeping family first, we actually consider our staff to be a major part of our family so when things get tough, I worry most about them and making sure they get paid (whether we are or not) and that they are happy.
Other struggles were times of figuring out how to take a company that was started and run by the same person for 25 years to operate itself. We had to figure out protocol and procedures that would reduce mistakes while keeping customers and our employees happy. The company has gone from literally being run from a clipboard to a self-functioning “machine” that doesn’t require the owners to be present at all times. I credit my employees for helping us to make that happen.
Change doesn’t come easy for everyone and we have been fortunate enough to have a staff that truly cares about the business. We work hard to view mistakes, not in a “whose fault was that” way but more from a “how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again” standpoint. That’s a hard thing to do. Another struggle at times is working side by side as a couple. We both have our strengths and weaknesses and we balance each other out fairly well, but many times at dinner I’d have to say…. do not talk to me about work.
Disagreements with a coworker are different when that coworker is your spouse. We’ve managed to make it through. We’ll be celebrating 19 years of marriage in October.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the J Harding & Co. story. Tell us more about the business.
J. Harding & Co. is a screen printing, embroidery and promotional products company that has been in business since 1978. We don’t really specialize in anything except what we do. While a large part of our business comes from the school districts, we have plenty of clients who are corporate, small businesses, family reunions, birthday parties etc. You name it, we probably know someone that does what you need.
We don’t have any single client that represents more than 5% of our business revenue. This is important to us as a company so that one major decision from one key client can’t affect our business and how it operates. It also shows us how important customer service is from the smallest to the largest orders, they all add up to what makes us successful.
We have no “sales staff”. We have customer service people. We like to tell our clients, “just get an idea of what you want, how much you want to spend, when you need it and we’ll help you find it.” We don’t do billboards or truck wraps… anything else we can probably get done for our clients. I think just that alone sets us apart from our competitors. Most of our new business is referred to us from previous clients.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
That’s hard for me to say. There is a lot of new digital equipment that would allow anyone to start up and print from their homes. Until that equipment can keep up with a screen printing or embroidery machine from a production standpoint.
The new stuff is really neat, but it is expensive and won’t print 300-500 pieces an hour. In the meantime, we’re constantly looking for ways to make jobs easier on our staff.
Contact Info:
- Address: 424 West 19th Street Houston, TX 77008
- Website: www.JHarding.com
- Phone: 713-862-9855
- Email: wendy@jhardingco.com
- Facebook: @jhardingco
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