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92 93 FINE DESIGNS those athletes were in school, or in college. But years later when they open their closet now they can share their achievements with their kids.We create quality souvenir apparel that will stay with them for a long time. Just like their medals.” “Something like this was already in the market,” Kostroub continues, “but my co-founder and our current CFO, Yuli Opalchuk, and I wanted to add something more personal to the level of service. It’s not about the T-shirts, it’s truly about the people. I’ve seen so much of what these athletes do to get where they are; building a road to qualify for the Olympics or to just surpass their own expectations for what they can accomplish. It makes you think about your business differently because you have relationships with the people who host these events, as well as the athletes and their families. Our vision as a company is all about honoring and serving people, whether that’s our employees or our customers.” In a nutshell, Fine Designs sells souvenir apparel with a unique event logo, on-site, at sporting events and other large gatherings. T-shirts, sweatshirts, tank tops, jackets–the company has their graphic artists create a design and also offers a large variety of sportswear. People come to the booth and see a large collection of logos.They can then decide whether they want to put a small logo on the chest, their name on the back, or another logo on the sleeve; everything can be customized right on the spot. Before each event, a member of the Fine Designs team contacts, or is contacted by, the host event director. Fine Designs then signs a contract with them agreeing to pay the event a percentage of the sales. Kostroub says, “Of those contacts, 30 percent call us, another 30 percent are set on multi-year contracts, and 40 percent are new business. Each of our franchise offices has a research team that works in our CRM, Salesforce. The research team works by adding new events in Salesforce.”While there are many others competing for sales, Fine Designs does most of the major events throughout the U.S. They attend between 90-200 events each weekend all throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Fine Designs always asks for the exclu- sive rights to provide customized-on-the-spot offi- What makes us different is, we come to the event with much more merchan- dise than most of the competition. For a middle-of-the-road production, let’s say a $10,000 event sale, we’ll bring upwards of 30 different styles. That’s unheard of in our industry. We also bring a significant amount of artwork graphics for additional customization. MIKE JANSSEN DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL SALES AT A GLANCE FINE DESIGNS WHAT: Customized on-site event apparel WHERE: Headquarters in Tukwila, Washington WEBSITE: www.finedesigns.com