American Solutions for Business – Karen Mendes

Since starting her journey in the promotional products industry 12+ years ago, American Solutions for Business (ASB) Sales Associate Karen Mendes, understands the importance of building relationships—whether it’s industry partners, colleagues, or customers. “I’ve always worked for companies, but I work with ASB. It’s like I’m working with my friends. Like attracts like, so it makes sense that ASB and OMG are partners.”

Based in Hawaii, which Karen refers to as “The Small Business State,” she faces the challenge of having very few corporate headquarters and large organizations to do business with. Instead, she partners closely with a diverse mix of small businesses with different needs, including education, healthcare, finance, automotive, and more.

Karen was seeking the best solution to service a wide range of businesses and programs, but needed one that allowed her to build stores quickly and was flexible enough to make changes on the fly.

After exploring a variety of online store solutions, Karen turned to OMG to create an employee uniforms and supplies store because of the platform’s ease of use and quick store building. From there, new opportunities began opening up one after the other.

Karen made the decision to partner with OMG to build stores more efficiently and meet the growing demands of her customers. By taking advantage of OMG’s guided onboarding process, Karen was able to quickly get started on the platform and received the help she needed, when she needed it.

Features like Bulk Actions allowed Karen to quickly add artwork to products and create mockups for the storefront. On the front-end, she was able to exceed her customer’s expectations with retail-like storefronts that provide a professional, modern experience for end-consumers. OMG’s mobile-friendly storefronts also enabled Karen to meet consumers where they shop the most, and place orders anytime, anywhere.

By partnering with OMG, Karen has also expanded customer spend and increased her sales potential. The flexibility and speed of setting up OMG stores means Karen can now offer new types of stores to her existing customers. She can also say yes to programs that would have been too time or cost intensive to support on other online store platforms.

For one healthcare customer, what started as a single store expanded into 40+ stores from employee recognition and incentives, to uniforms and supplies. For another organization servicing students, Karen was able to generate $60k in sales from a single store by offering a convenient way for students to order apparel and supplies. By experimenting with her customers, she has also ventured outside of selling hardgoods and apparel and even uses online stores to sell experiences, like tickets to student events. Using a flexible online store solution allowed Karen and her customers to think outside the box and be creative in how they offer branded merchandise and apparel.

At the end of the day, Karen believes it boils down to listening to her customers’ needs and working as a partner to help them discover new opportunities and ways to be successful.