2019 MK Quilts Year in Review – A community, not a company

We thought it would be a good time of the year to share about MK Quilts; our past year and our plans for 2020.  It will also all you, our customers, to also provide your feedback – good or bad – and give us guidance on where you would like to see us focus in 2020.  The ‘blog’ format allows for public comments.  Sort of like the predecessor to Facebook.

MK Quilts has done exceptionally well this year as we put key people and processes in place so that we would be respected as a national business that people could trust.  We slipped into the top 25 retailers of 2018 through a storm of machine orders at the end of the year.  Our focus on training and service before sales paid-off.  But we knew we needed to plan for the long term and figure out a way to scale our unique business model.

We invested in marketing with Google and Facebook ads.  But we believe it was really the word-of-mouth referrals that our customers gave on our behalf that lead to the most sales.  We paid out thousands of dollars in referral credits.  Sorry Google, we would rather pay our loyal customers.  We thought we would share some of the ways we have invested the money that our customers have provided…

• We have hired a core set of employees - Ellen, Theresa, Mark, Johnny and Pam.
• We have partnered with over a dozen certified technicians from Florida to Hawaii that provide installation and service across the county.  (We can’t even keep our ‘about us’ web page up to date with all the people that have joined us.  But give me time.)
• We have licensed infrastructure software to better manage our customers and processes.
• We leased the space next door, doubling our Florida-based quilting studio to provide additional space for training and a place for MK to create additional content.  Stay tuned for small group retreat training events in Florida in 2020.
• And of course, we must pay the accountants to help pay the taxes and keep the books.

We are attempting to build an international community of people with a passion for the quilting industry.  Although sometimes it feels like we are focusing on selling the next longarm system, we are constantly working to provide the best value for the money that people spend with us.  Although we were glad to sell many machines at the low end-of-November “Show Price” promoted by Handi Quilter, we could not survive as a business.   Providing the training and services that distinguish MK Quilts from other retailers costs money.  Regretfully, we have had to send potential customers to the “no-service and no-support competition” when they insist on buying purely on price.  We also do not do price matching nor do we poach other retailer's customers.  It is a customer's choice on who they want to work with.

So how do we continue to offer a full-day onsite install, quality online training content, and a full day of actual training while offering the lowest possible price?

We have the following ideas in the works, but we would love to hear from you.

• Create a certification training for “MK Clones” that can perform onsite training instead of MK.
• Offer to fly customers to Florida to attend extended training at our studio with a small group.  The one-day training at a customer’s home could turn into two days of group training.  One-on-one training would still be available; however, system quotes would be adjusted depending on the type of training selected.
• A new version of training videos focused on the beginner longarmers, resulting in fewer support calls.  (In the works.)
• Continue providing credits for videos previously purchased.
• More MK Owners only content and events.

We make mistakes.  The machines may have issues.  Software will have bugs.  Even a spool of thread can go bad and cause poor stitch quality.  Our goal is to make sure that our customers never feel like they are alone in solving a problem.  As MK has grown to have thousands of followers, we have relied on the support of our community to help us scale.  The personal support between our community members has been fantastic.  
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If you would like to see us implement or change something, please leave us a message in the comments.