All About Us

The Year in Review

2012 has been an extremely busy year for Trophies2Go!  We recap each quarter of 2012 below…

Our highest achievement - the ARA Large Retailer of the Year.

Quarter 1:  At the first of the year, we launched our Issaquah Trophy and Trophies2Go videos.  If you haven’t done so already, check them out on Youtube/AwardsGuru’s channel .  They were a blast to make, are fun to watch, and are great snapshots of our companies! In late January, Jeff, Tom and I attended the Awards and Recognition Association (ARA) Trade Show in Las Vegas.  The highlight of the show was when Issaquah Trophy & Awards, our local brand, won the Awards Industry’s highest honor, the' ARA Large Retailer of the Year'.  What a thrill it was for our company to win this prestigious award!  To end out the quarter, our Q1 ‘Awards for a Cause’ was Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society.  Thank you customers for supporting such a worthwhile charity!

Star101.5 Weiner Dog Races - check out the awesome trophy!

Quarter 2:  In April, our CEO Jeff Anderson won the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year.  Again, Jeff was humbled and excited to be honored with this award by our community!  The Social Media Madness competition was our focus in May.  While we didn’t make it to the second round of the contest, we ended in 6^th place in our division, and more importantly, launched our Trophies2Go Facebook Page, Issaquah Trophy Facebook page, and our weekly blog posts. In June, we achieved a huge milestone; our  100,00^th order!  The winner of this distinction went to Dickenson Elementary, in Redmond, WA.   Our 2^nd Quarter ‘Awards for a Cause’ was SAMBICA, a local Christian Summer Camp.  July brought the STAR 101.5 Weiner Dog Races at Emerald Downs, where we sponsor the giant weiner dog trophies.  We love this event, as the dogs are hilarious!

Check out our awesome t-shirts designed by Laurie for our staff party!

Quarter 3:  The beginning of September brought our glass blowing Staff Party, complete with Trophies2Go t-shirt contest.  We had a great time playing games, creating glass art, eating BBQ, and having fun with each other!  Our 3^rd quarter ‘Awards for a Cause’ charity was the Susan G Komen 3-Day Walk.  Not only did we raise money for the organization, but Janice and I also volunteered at the Seattle closing of this emotional and inspirational event.  September also brought Issaquah Trophy’s participation in ‘Splash Mob – The Ultimate Salmon Quest’, a Salmon Days event. Brent Naylor won a $100 gift certificate to Issaquah Trophy for visiting our showroom during Splash Mob.   Sammy the Salmon visited our showroom one afternoon, playing games and taking pictures with kids from the community.

Quarter 4:  This fall we unveiled our newest exclusive product…The Honey Badger Trophy!   This little trophy doesn’t give a darn, he’s nasty and crazy!  December brought our Holiday Staff party, complete with chili cookoff and gift exchange.  Anne was the big winner of the cook off, with an engraved ladle as her prize.  At the party, Laurie was awarded Jeff’s “President’s Award” for being an unsung hero in the company.  We also awarded our 2012 Vendor of the Year (JDS Industries), Customer of the Year (Yvette Smith with T-Mobile) and Product of the Year (Monster trophies from Continental Awards).

To recap the year, it’s been a busy one for all of us here at Trophies2Go.  Thank you doesn’t seem like enough to acknowledge all of the effort, teamwork, and hard work our staff goes through every day for our customers and our company.  Here’s to our Trophies2Go Team: Anne, Chris, Edzel, Janice, Jeremy, Julie, Laurie, Margene, Mika, Mike, Paul, and Tom.  You guys are the best, and we wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for your dedication, commitment and willingness to give your all every day!  Let’s put 2012 to bed and bring on a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013!

Cheers, Jessica

As part of our year end recognition, we award a “Product of the Year” to one of our best-selling, most outstanding awards we offer.  The 2012 winner is our “Monster” line of trophies by Continental Awards & Trophies.

Our 2012 Product of the Year - Monster Trophies by Continental. This is one of our most popular trophies, with a 5-Star rating and tons of Facebook likes!

What makes these trophies exceptional?  First, they're different - very different. They’re also well made, durable, and versatile.  They are really fun and are a hit with most people with a Y-chromosome;  guys love them, both young and old.

So what kind of monsters do we have?  We carry Hunky Soccer Monsters , Fierce Lacrosse Monsters , Buff Basketball Monsters , Ripped Baseball Monsters , Victorious Hulk Monsters , and Macho Martial Arts Monsters .

Which one is my favorite?  It’s our Football Monsters , especially our Monster Fantasy Football Perpetual Trophy .  This trophy is not only one of our best sellers, but it has the most Facebook likes (60!) of any product we offer.  It also has a 5 Star rating from our customers, with raving comments.  As one of our customers puts it, “This is a quality trophy that combines the fun of FF (Fantasy Football) with a certain fictional quality to it. Ideal if you really want a long term reward in addition to a financial award.”

Thank you Continental Awards & Trophies for offering this fantastic line of trophies to us!  We are grateful to all of our suppliers for their terrific products – if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be in business!

Cheers, Jessica

As part of our Recognition Program, each December we recognize a Supplier, Product, and Customer of the Year.  This post will discuss the winner of our 2012 Supplier of the Year – JDS Industries.

We are lucky to have many fantastic suppliers that create all of our high quality trophies and awards. Without their excellent products and great customer service, we would not be in business! So you can imagine what a hard decision choosing this award was for us.

We used guidelines to decide the award. The criteria for choosing the winner included…

Do they have high quality and/or good value products?

Are they consistent and reliable, with a good return policy?

Is the delivery time acceptable?

Do they provide us with competitive pricing? Do they offer good payment terms?

Is the company easy to deal with? Will they stand behind their products and word of their people?

Using this criteria, our staff nominated their favorite supplier, and the winner was chosen by Jeff, our President.

The winner of our 2012 Supplier of the Year is JDS industries, located in Sioux Falls, SD. We offer many of their awards to our customers. My personal favorite of their awards is the Circle Crystal Award. We also contracted JDS to create our newest exclusive award, The Honey Badger. They helped us come up with the critter’s design and produced them for us in their factory.

We also enjoy working with the friendly, efficient and knowledgeable JDS staff. Joe, our JDS sales representative, visits us at least twice a year to make sure we have everything we need to be successful in the Awards and Recognition Industry. He gives us tips and ideas to be more successful and always recommends products without being pushy. He’s a great guy to work with!

Even though JDS has great products and nice people, many of our other suppliers have the same thing. It’s their local Distribution Center that sets them apart. About a year ago, JDS opened a new Distribution Center about 5 miles from our Production Facility, where all of our trophies and awards are made. It’s extremely convenient to drive to the nearby JDS warehouse to pick up any product that we need for customer orders. This helps us keep our production time to 3 days, and ensures our Production Time Guarantee. By getting needed products and parts so quickly, we make sure that our orders are engraved, assembled, and shipped in time for customers’ events.

JDS really has their act together and this makes our lives much easier! Thank you, JDS, and all of our suppliers for your service to Trophies2Go!

Cheers,

Jessica

'AWESOME' Ribbons

At Trophies2Go, each and every day we help companies recognize their employees.  We create meaningful awards for top performers, sales stars, employees of the month, retirees, years of service, managers – you name it, we make it.  But what do we do for our own employees?

Our newest informal recognition program - Awesome Ribbons.

This fall, we created a new informal recognition program called “Awesome Ribbons”.  The original goal of the program was to increase internal team-building.   If a person noticed a co-worker doing something they deemed ‘awesome’, they awarded them a ribbon.  These blue ribbons had the word 'AWESOME' on it in rainbow colors.  Each person had 10 ‘Awesome’ ribbons to give away in a month and a half.

Instructions:

DO: Give them to your co-worker when you notice him/her do something exceptional, either for you, another co-worker, a customer, or the overall company.  Write the date, your name, the recipient’s name, and the task that earned the ribbon on the back (stickers were provided to write this info).  Give them out before November 15, 2012.  Display the ribbons you earn at your desk or work space.  Keep the ribbons you earn – you will need them in the future.  Have fun awarding your co-workers & receiving recognition!

DON’T:  Give them away for no reason.  These are for awesome and exceptional things only!  Give them for a petty reason, like looking nice or having a good day.  “Re-gift” a ribbon.  They only get awarded once.  Bribe others to get them.  They must be earned.

Ribbons started circulating throughout the company within the office, at our production facility, and between the two sites.  Ribbons also started showing up at work stations – pinned to bulletin boards, taped to computers, shelves and printers.  It was fun to see everyone getting recognized for going above and beyond for the company, our customers and each other.  After some time, the Nov 15^th deadline arrived and the program was ended.  Now came the important part of any recognition program - evaluating how effective the program was and if the goal of the program was attained.

After surveying our staff about the 'Awesome Ribbons', here’s what we discovered:

When we started the program, we weren’t exactly sure how the Awesome Ribbons would be used.  Overall feedback about the program was positive.  Our staff enjoyed giving and receiving recognition with each other.  However, this seemed most worthwhile if it wasn’t tied to a competition.  There was some confusion about what tasks were worthy of a ribbon.  This wasn’t well defined.  The majority of our staff wanted to continue the program.

When it was all said and done, here's what we learned from our experience:

When creating a recognition program, things may not always go as planned; what you intend to happen doesn't always occur.  This was the case for our program.   We were glad that people liked giving and receiving recognition, but didn't expect that people wouldn't want to be competitive with their ribbons.

When evaluating a recognition program, it's important to figure out what you did well and where you can improve for the future.  That 's the best way to improve your program and reach your goal.  When evaluating our 'Awesome Ribbons' program, what we did well was communicate the program, have a defined test period, and evaluate our staffs' experiences when it was completed.  What we didn't do well was set criteria for giving a ribbon and set the expectation that this program was a competition.

Our President, Jeff, has decided to keep the program going for now.  The original goal of team building was met, along with more recognition within our company, which is always a good thing!

Our Other Recognition Programs for 2013

1. Years of Service Awards

2. 'Honey Badger of the Quarter' Award

3. President’s Award (Unsung Hero)

For more information about creating a Recognition Program for your organization, please contact us – we’d be happy to help you.

Cheers,

Jessica

Ewww!  What the heck is that?  Why it’s a Honey Badger, the most fearless animal in the animal kingdom.  A pop culture icon, the Honey Badger don’t care, he takes what he wants!  He just eats that cobra!

This crazy nasty creature is our 2013 Product of the Year!

If you don’t know about The Honey Badger, you need a YouTube education!  Check the video out (warning:  This contains R-rated language, not ok for young ears!)

Now that we have that out of the way, we love Honey Badgers, and decided that we needed a Honey Badger trophy.  We worked with our supplier JDS, and they designed a custom Honey Badger Trophy just for us!  Only available at Trophies2Go, this is our newest and most fun trophy EVER!

If you know someone who’s a real spitfire and just goes for it, consider awarding them a Honey Badger.  Or if you have a group full of spunk, perpetual-ize your Honey Badger for years of enjoyment and laughs!

That Honey Badger – what a crazy, nasty critter!  He don’t care!

Cheers,Jessica