October 8, 2009

A Call to Excellence – Customer Service Week 2009

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Every year in October we celebrate our Customer Service department with Customer Service Week. This year is no different. The whole company realizes what an important part of the team customer services is.

It’s a fun week, filled with games, food, contests and sometimes costumes. Every day this week has been something different. This year there were three contests – Guess who!, ID competitor rosettes from a photo  & Who’s gonna win the football game  on Sunday.

We started the week with a “Guess Who!”  Almost everyone brought in a childhood photograph and you had to match the employee with their photo.

  

Apparently  I haven’t changed much because everyone knew this picture was me.

The next part of the week was fun too. Everyone had a chance to role play. Each department in the company tried their hand in another department for an hour. Of course the most popular request was to be the president!

This Friday is causal day with cheese  ‘n’ crackers with the winners of the contests being announce but today is my favorite day. It’s the lunchtime picnic. Rick Hodges heat up the grill and cooks a mean burger. I can taste them already!

Just so you see what I’m talking about,here are a couple of pictures from years past:  

 

October 5, 2009

NEW Silver Presentation Trays for Fall

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We are constantly looking for NEW solutions to the same questions we’ve been asking for over 89 years now – What kind of new awards can we offer our customers?

Wave Tray

New Wave Tray

As the world is changing and we are too. We continue to bring you the classic awards like  Ideal Rosettes, Point Top Ribbons, and LX Medals but year after year we bring in new ideas to keep our products up to date and fresh. This year we are adding 5 New Silver Presentation trays.

These silver trays are an economical solution to special awards that you want customized. Text engraving is free and for only $5 more a tray you can get your custom logo engraved as well. Check them out >> NEW SILVER AWARDS

 

September 18, 2009

Hodges supports NEMOA and ACMA

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This week Rick Hodges (CEO), Jenn Hodges (Customer Service Manager), Jennifer Rocha (E-Commerce Manager) and Rochelle Ramalho (Product Manager) travelled to Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, CT for the fall meeting of the New England Mail Order Association and three days of meetings about mail order business.  Even though 75% of our orders come over the telephone, we still hark back to our roots when orders actually arrived in envelopes – and call ourselves a mail order business.

Highlights included great sessions on search engine optimization and how to remain profitable during the recession (40 Ways to Lose Your Losses).  Friday morning we heard from Hamilton Davidson of the ACMA (American Catalog Mailers Association) who talked about where the USPS is going and what catalogers can expect to see over the next 12 months.

 

September 10, 2009

ASCA – American Swim Coaches Association World Clinic

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We’re in Fort Lauderdale this morning at the American Swim Coaches World Clinic and Tradeshow taking place at the Marriot Harbor Beach. If your in town stop by and see us at Booth 506.  We’re showing off our new trophies and exclusive swim level ribbons that haven’t even reached the catalogs yet. We’re pretty excited about this line of ribbons and know the kids will love them.

The clinic started off last night with an opening reception on the beach with a carnival like theme – food, games and fun for all.  The next three days will be busy filled with presentations by vendors and coaches, dinners to honor all the Olympic swim coaches in attendance and an inductee to the Swimmers Hall of Fame.  

So once again stop by our booth #506 at the ASCA World Clinic Tradeshow in Fort Lauderdale, FL. We are in the lower level of the tradeshow just beyond the registration desk. We would love to see what you think of our new line and hear what you’re looking for!

 

August 14, 2009

Red Ribbon Week

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Every year in October schools and organizations around the country unite to raise awareness and promote a drug free lifestyle. While honoring Kiki Camarena, a DEA special agent killed in the line of duty, the nations young people pleadge to lead a healthy and drug free life.

Hodges has a Red Ribbon Flyer to help with ideas. We hav new “drug free” products and slogans each year. This year we’ve added keychains button and two NEW slogans: “I have better things to do than drugs” and “The key to life: stay drug free!”.

I love the keychain buttons. They combines three great promotional components: useful keychains, colorful buttons and inspirational drug free slogans.  Kids will love the bright and colorful designs yet still get the important message conveyed in the button. Plus you can put your school or sponsor name on each.

 drug These two are my favorites designs! drug1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read about the history of Red Ribbon Week  at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Admin website

 

July 22, 2009

SEND US YOUR PHOTOS!

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RosettesWe are putting out a call to gather photos of Hodges Badge Company awards in action. We’re looking for all types of photos from anyone who gives or receives Hodges’ awards.  

Send us your photos! Tell us the who, where and when of the event, fill out these forms and look for your photo in our catalog, emails or on our website!

Release Forms

 

July 13, 2009

Equestrian Catalog Cover Contest, 2010.

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We are once again running a contest for next year’s Equestrian Catalog cover. We had some great entries last year and  hope that the trend continues. If you want to take a look at last year’s winners for ideas as to what we think  makes a good cover follow this link:  www.hodgesbadge.com.
Winners

Winners

To enter, submit by mail a color photograph attached to an official entry form. The official rules are on the form. You can enter as many times as you’d like but each entry has to be accompanied by an entry form.

Check out these great awards:

  • Grand Prize – $2500 plus photograph appears on the cover of Hodge’s Badge Company’s 2010 Equestrian Awards Catalog
  • Honorable Mention – $100 each plus photograph appears in the Equestrian Awards Catalog

Hurry! Entries must be postmarked on or before October 1, 2009!

 

July 2, 2009

New website, coming Fall 2009!

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This fall we should be launching our new website with the help of DMInsite for web design and Adobe’s Scene 7 rich media platform. Great change is coming and it’s something we hope that all our customers will appreciate.

The website we have currently was first built over 7 years ago and has evolved rather slowly over those 7 years into what you see today. During these 7 years a great deal has changed on the internet.

The following figure from Internet World Stats is a table showing the number of internet users in the United States over the past 8 years.

YEAR Population Users % Pop. Usage Source
2000 281,421,906 124,000,000 44.1 % ITU
2001 285,317,559 142,823,008 50.0 % ITU
2002 288,368,698 167,196,688 58.0 % ITU
2003 290,809,777 172,250,000 59.2 % ITU
2004 293,271,500 201,661,159 68.8 % Nielsen//NetRatings
2005 299,093,237 203,824,428 68.1 % Nielsen//NetRatings
2007 301,967,681 212,080,135 70.2 % Nielsen//NetRatings
2008 303,824,646 220,141,969 72.5 % Nielsen//NetRatings

As you can see; the internet usage in the US has just about doubled over the past 8 years. Since our switch to Verndale in 2002 the site has had one real face-lift that only changed the look of the site and didn’t really affect the underlying capabilities of it – this was four years ago. We hope that with this new website we can make it easier for you to get what you want in a much improved manner.

In 2008 alone our website brought 10.51% more visits than 2007 and generated 1.66 million pageviews. These numbers are nothing compared to Amazon or Google but if you look at how far we have come; the first year that we had analytics running on our website it had 90,000 visits but in the past 6 months of 2009 we have had almost 70,000 visits. With an increase this big in visitors it’s definitely time for a change, we realize that it isn’t the easiest thing to purchase off our website and we hope to improve customer experience come this fall.

Along with the new website we will be rolling out a personalization system for some of our most popular products which we hope will not only give you a way to preview your product before you get it, but at the same time also reduce any discrepancies between what you want and what you get.

For a little bit of nostalgia and to take a peek at what our website looked like many years ago you should check out the “Wayback Machine”, specifically here. You can even see what our website looked like when it first launched way back in 1997.

Having a new website not only makes the job easier for the web team here at Hodges but it improves the experience you have when you buy something off our website.

We are looking for customer feedback; what sort of things would you like to see on the new website, and what sort of things could we change to make purchasing your awards on www.hodgesbadge.com an easier task for you? Put your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section, we would love to hear them.

 

June 29, 2009

Happy 4th of July!

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festivalcHappy 4th of July

 Everyone!

Hodges Badge will be closed July 3rd so our employees can enjoy a long weekend and spend the holiday with friends and family.

Stay Safe!

 

June 12, 2009

The Quality of our products is VERY important!

Posted by hodgesbadge under Awards, Hodges Badge Company | Tags: , |
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Hodges Badge Company takes pride in selling Quality items. Your satisfaction is important to us and we want your awards to embody the hard work and dedication the recipients put into achieving them.

Every catalog we also strive to include new quality products to offer you more choices. These new products are researched extensively before being added to the catalog to ensure they can meet your needs.

Unfortunately, as with life there are sometimes some unforeseen problems. This has been the circumstance with the Resin Horse Trophies displayed in the 2009 Equestrian Catalog and on the Hodges website.

We were so excited to include this beautiful selection of trophies, however after several customers complaints of  unsatisfactory awards , Hodges has decided to discontinue this line immediately.

If you have any questions about this or need suggestions on another trophy selection, please do not hesitate to contact customer service. 

 1-800-556-2440

customerservice@hodgesbadge.com

 

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