Customer Growth Journey with KG Specialties

KG Specialties is a Portland-based distributor who, early in 2023, merged with Premier Press. Premier employs over 200 people, and they handle a wide variety of print, fulfillment, and logistics management for clients.

When asked how commonsku aided KG Specialties' readiness for this merger he noted, "If we didn't have commonsku during the pandemic we wouldn't have made it. Since joining, it's been overwhelmingly powerful for us as a team. We've embraced it and it's helped with so many efficiencies. It's so powerful that in negotiating this merger we needed to have commonsku on board without a doubt for a deal to be done."

Kyle Gibson started his business as a contract screenprinter and embroiderer in the basement of his house 27 years ago. Fast forward to today, Kyle runs a multi-million dollar distributorship out of Portland, OR, working with construction, finance, utility companies, and many more, all along the Pacific Northwest.

The KG Specialties team needed a program that would operate in real time, so that everyone could have visibility into what projects were being worked on and what their margins were so that they could continue to grow their sales and their team!

As a legacy team, with some team members holding upwards of 20 years of experience, the idea of changing systems didn’t come without careful consideration and evaluation of the platform. Once they decided to make the switch, the APC team fully embraced it! “Our Customer Success Rep at commonsku became our personal commonsku guru and walked us through every step of the system!” remarked Lauren, “We spread out the training over the course of a couple of weeks with about 5, 1-hour long sessions. The pace of the training was amazing so that we had time to digest the information and practice between sessions.”

The time savings that KG Specialties has experienced because of commonsku has opened up their sales employees calendars to have more time to research products and trends, and network within the industry. Because of commonsku, Kyle Gibson now has time to be an owner! He can focus on mentoring his team, building culture, and strategizing for his company, which for him has been priceless.