After 14 years,
Visual Promotions CEO
uses slump to recast
Sandy Myers built a successful promotional products and trade show display company over the last 14 years, called Visual Promotions. In some recent years annual revenue hit $1 million, not bad for a firm with two employees. “We do anything to help companies get more visual and get exposure,” she says.
Then came the economic slump, and Myers began to think about doing something new. She used the time created by a dip in sales to attend workshops and seminars, see friends, travel. “After 14 years I was getting a little bored,” Myers says. “I was looking at how can I have fun, make a difference, and provide gifts to people that they really appreciate.”
The result is a new division, Gifted Promotions, with the tag line, “the fine art of giving.” “I’ve collected art for 20 years, so it’s always been my passion. It’s marrying my passion with my expertise with printing and promotion,” Myers says.
She’s building a stable of artists whose artwork clients can print on objects to give, such as notecards or just about anything else. Clients can sponsor events as well. The first will be in April at the Family Expo at River- Centre in St. Paul. Gifted Promotions will show a doll collection created by April Egenberger, an artist who decided after Sept. 11 to create a doll and write a poem every day for a year. Companies will sponsor the show and the giveaway of postcards with the doll images on them.
Myers says right before Sept. 11 she met an artist and began working on reproducing his artwork on fabric. “It wasn’t too long after that that artists started showing up,” she says. “They don’t know how to market themselves.
Myers isn’t sure what she’ll do with the existing business, but she envisions potential rollout around the country with Gifted Promotions. “I see it could be national with sales reps around the country,” she says.
She’s calm about the risk involved. “Everything you do in business is a risk, but I needed to make a change, and at the same time things were changing in the economy. I decided to use that time to feed me,” she says.
Sandy Myers, Visual Promotions and Gifted Promotions: 612.926.7699; sandy@visualpromo.com; www.visualpromo.com
