DBA EMAIL: 2/24/2009

February 24, 2009

DBA'ers,

VC has a new "product" he's wanting us to highlight and advertise. Actually, it's been around for a long time, but as all the white lab coat marketing types will tell you, these things run in cycles.

When you come to pick up your frame job, we always pull the plastic off your artwork so you can see it. We do this, in part, because we want you to take a good look at the finished product before it goes out the door. If there is anything nutty with it, we want to know about it before you leave. Like the one time I inadvertently put one side of the frame on facing backwards.....honest, I didn't do it on purpose. Don't know what happened. Our Quality Control Division (Janice) is still reviewing the matter. If someone else starts sending you emails, you know what the findings of the QCD were.

We also do it for very selfish reasons. We love seeing people's faces when we pull the plastic off and flip it around with a flourish and say something intelligent like, "Ta-Da"! We love seeing people's faces, because we are just as proud of it as you are. And we get just as excited about how good it looks as you do. Especially those of you who spend an hour picking out the moulding and matting (you know who you are!). It truly is one the fringe benefits of our job....we get paid to make people happy. Good stuff for Good Work (GSGW!)

VC calls this "product" Swagger. It's not boasting about something you can't do. It's not boasting about something you can do. It's not making stupid stuff up that didn't happen (that's my job). You can't spray it on and it doesn't come out of a can. It is about doing. It is old fashion pride and knowledge that you have done something right, for the right reason.....and the look on the customer's face is the right result. That's called Swagger.

All you have to do is watch VC and Janice work and you know what it is. Might not be able to quite define it, but you know it when it is genuine and real. VC has probably measured a million miles, 1/8 and 1/16 inch at a time with his sad worn out plastic ruler, to make sure the print is centered and the matting is exactly in the right place. Janice has probably gone through a million miles of thread, one stitch at a time tying down needlepoint and shadowboxes. And both have done it consistently for years. When we get a re-frame job in from years ago, they can take the paper off the back and tell who did the framing, just by looking at how it was put together. That's Swagger.

And guess what? When you walk out the door with your newly framed pictures of your Grandkids or the artwork your Grandmother did when she was a teenager......you get to keep the Swagger....no charge.

In the Customer Swagger Department check out the Valentine's Day article in the Athens Banner-Herald on one of our customers, Selina Hayes of Maysville about how her Grandfather proposed to her Grandmother. That's Swagger! The picture shown in the article is one we framed for Selina.

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/021409/liv_387684864.shtml

Thanks for playing nicely,
The Swaggermeisters of
DonByramArt