A Stevensville company that serves clients all over the nation will be moving a few miles North on Red Arrow Highway/Lakeshore Drive to an existing building in St. Joseph, helping facilitate its continued growth in an industry that has changed dramatically over a few years.
Competitive Edge, the promotional products company headed by Owner/CEO Mary Jo Tomasini, will vacate its attractive headquarters office building in a park-like setting at 5924 Red Arrow Hwy, Stevensville, and relocate to a newly remodeled office/warehouse facility near the corner of Hawthorne Road and Lakeshore Drive in St. Joseph.
Tomasini sat down with MoodyOnTheMarket.com to detail her plans for the next chapter at the highly successful Competitive Edge:
“We had an investor from Chicago approach us about buying our building and we were feeling at that time that we needed a different space because it was configured for how we operated 30 years ago. In recent years, we had to rent several other small warehouses off-site to make everything work based on how our business is growing. So, it was an opportunity to sell the building and kind of ‘dream a new dream’ of what a different space could look like for our future.”
Mary Jo said she found the perfect fit in a building that’s very different from CE’s current headquarters, working with The Southshore Companies, the locally based owners of many office and industrial buildings in Michigan’s Great Southwest and several other states.
“So, we started down that road. We also knew that we wanted to lease instead of constructing a building. So, we started looking at what was available in the market and went through a lot of different properties. And we settled on the Southshore Companies property at Hawthorne. Southshore actually persuaded a couple of tenants to move into a different space and that allowed us to have the space that we needed that backed up to a warehouse. So, our main warehouse will be contiguous with the offices, which is a beautiful thing.”
Tomasini acknowledged that her new building will not compete in a ‘beauty contest’ with the old CE offices that overlook Lake Michigan, just South of the Grande Mere Inn. However, from a business perspective, she’s excited for her employees and the future.
“We won’t have the view that we have here. You know, that’s probably the saddest part about moving. But we’ll have a warehouse, which I know is not as pretty as Lake Michigan, but it will make our efficiencies a lot better. A portion of the building has a warehouse-height ceiling as it goes back from the street and then another Southshore warehouse is built onto that. So, it’s one of those buildings that, from the street, you don’t realize how deep it goes.”
Tomasini explained that her 29 employees will have plenty of space to carry out changing responsibilities.
“It’s roughly about 11,000 square feet total in our new building. The warehouse is 50-something and the office is 50-something. And then we have flex space available from Southshore of up to 50,000 square feet, maybe more, because there’s extra space that we can expand into if we have a temporary project or if something large comes along that we need space for a period of time.”
Tomasini said there have been huge changes in how promotional products orders are handled and shipped— ‘fulfillment’ as they call it in the industry.
“The fulfillment projects that we do are just very different post-2020. It used to be that a lot of your promotional things went to a company’s door or loading dock. They got 2,000 things to hand out to their employees. They took it from there. Now, with remote work and other changes, a lot of times those 2,000 things are going to each employee’s home. That’s 2,000 different places!”
Put a logo on a rose petal
Mary Jo told us the array of promotional items that CE can offer has become almost mind-boggling.
“The product offering has grown exponentially. I remember a while ago– this is my 40th year in the business– I remember saying, ‘We have a hundred thousand different things we can offer people.’ And we were so proud. A hundred thousand seemed like such a large number. And then at some point it was a quarter of a million items. Well now, it’s well over a million items!”
Tomasini says technological improvements have made so many promo ideas possible.
“A lot of the reasons that has changed is because imprinting capabilities have changed substantially. I remember 30 years ago doing beach towels for the Venetian Festival, where they had a complex, multi-color logo, and you had to make giant screens, and the minimum was very high. I mean, there was no running 50 towels. Or the Krasl Art Center used to want to do custom art mugs, and you’d have to buy 588 or whatever, and now you can print one of those mugs if you want to. And it’s because imprinting capabilities have changed so tremendously. That’s really one of the biggest changes that we have the ability to more affordably print using diverse techniques to get an imprint on different products. You can literally put a logo on a rose petal or just about any type of product that you can imagine.”
Competitive Edge has dramatically grown, especially in recent years, adding sales offices in Grand Rapids, Detroit and South Carolina. With clients nationwide, Tomasini acknowledged she could locate anywhere.
“Although we can serve from anywhere, we choose to keep our HQ firmly planted in Michigan’s Great Southwest while expanding our global footprint. Our Michigan home keeps us rooted in our local values and connected to all of the people who have contributed to our continued success.”
Tomasini has special thanks and praise for the leadership and support of CE President Paula Wygonik. Paula is Mary Jo’s sister and joined the company more than 20 years ago when it was a local and regional enterprise.
We asked Mary Jo to look back over several decades in business and focus on what’s driven her success with Competitive Edge:
“Our commitment to not only achieve customers’ expectations but exceed them. And, you know, 32 years ago, that was important to a customer, to be wowed, to be delighted, to have your shipment show up early versus late. Well, now as we shift and look at how the business world has changed since COVID, it’s even more important!
And that’s just our innate nature here to go above and beyond and to be amazing. And so it’s been the consistency of delivering that over and over again. That’s honestly what endears our customers to us.
It’s also our flexibility that we will do things that other people might not do. As far as packaging or presentation, doing something extra special. We don’t ever say this is our ‘cookie cutter plan’ and you need to fit in it. We always say, ‘what do you need and how can we do it?’
So, I think the ‘secret sauce’ is what my grandmother taught me a long, long time ago: ‘You always do what you say you’re going to do, period, without exception.’ And, unfortunately, in today’s world that often doesn’t happen. Here at Competitive Edge, it does!”
Tomasini expects CE to complete its move to the Hawthorne facility in January.
Learn more about Competitive Edge at www.cepromo.net
Competitive Edge CEO/Owner Mary Jo Tomasini
Competitive Edge President Paula Wygonik
By Gayle Olson, MOTM Contributor
