CanvasRebel - Jonathan Brimer | Incentive Photography by Kelli Price
I met Jonathan and his partner, Jason, in 2015 at the SITE Southeast member favorite…. Southern Supper. Our journey into the meetings & incentives industry is very similar. I’ve enjoyed partnering with them on several events and highly recommend them as a gifting partner! SITE Southeast was lucky to have them back again at our 2021 Summit in Savannah!
Read the original article from CanvasRebel here.
From a roadside lemonade stand as a young kid to guiding two sunglasses businesses, I feel like I have more blessings that I ever deserved and it inspires me to keep dreaming! - Jonathan
Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jonathan Brimer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jonathan, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career
I believe we need to bridge the gap between public education and the private sector. It seems that kids are not learning the essentials like how to prepare a resume, how to conduct oneself in an interview, how to search for the right jobs, or even how to prepare for personal finances. The private sector is often lumped into one big perception: greedy capitalists. But what if we were able to leverage all of the great things about our free enterprise system and teach young people – especially underprivileged young people, that innovation should be rewarded. As should showing up to an interview prepared – even if it’s just an hourly job! Having entrepreneurs from all backgrounds, all creeds come into the public school system and share their stories would be transformational. The small business accountant could teach a seminar on how to prepare for tax returns. The entrepreneurial financial planner might do a takeover one day on how to avoid unnecessary college debt. I personally would love to persuade kids on the value of personal networking and not discounting any relationship in your life. Whether from Fortune 500 companies or small business owners, a thriving and healthy private sector investment into public education would be presciently beneficial for students, take some burden off overextended educators, and quell public perception that the free enterprise system only answers to the almighty dollar.
Jonathan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My career started with Marriott hotels after I pivoted in college from a meteorology major to a degree in Florida State University’s hospitality program (I took one gander at the coursework for meteorology and decided that was NOT for me). Having my own business always appealed to me from my earliest days as a ten-year-old with a lemonade stand. What I did not realize was how well a career path in the hotel industry prepares one for business ownership. With the opportunity to study and shadow numerous business practices under one roof – accounting, revenue management and forecasting, customer care, sales & marketing, food & beverage, attention to cleanliness and detail, etc – being open to many disciplines at a hotel is a blueprint for an well-rounded knowledge of business.
After a twelve-year run with Marriott, through personal friendships and connections, I was asked to leverage my hotel career to launch a business division of a successful regional sunglass chain. That division, called Select Shades, created a sunglass boutique pop-up gifting experience that was unlike any other in the corporate and incentives gifting marketplace. It was already established that premium sunglasses made a nearly perfect gift at sales incentive trips and other events in which people were being rewarded or thanked. They’re portable, they’re practical, they’re fashionable, and they’re an investment not everyone is willing to spend a lot of their personal money on. What made Select Shades different is our ability to lean on the network of retail store data and vendors in our parent company to deliver a vast array of brands not previously offered in the gifting space. In our first year, we brought in nearly $900,000 in revenue. It was clear there was a robust market for the experience we offered.
About a year-and-a-half into my work launching Select Shades, the owner of the parent company sold the retail stores to a global sunglass retail conglomerate. Since Select Shades was a division of the company, it was not included in the sale. I was out of a job. My options were to go back into the hotel business, try my luck in a new career field, or partner with my friend and colleague from the retail stores, Jason Pittenger, and start our own company. We kept the name Select Shades and proceeded to start from scratch knowing we needed retail stores in order to make the corporate gifting viable. Working out of a public storage unit with what few sunglasses we could procure without a retail store, we convinced our clients to come along for our journey and continue trusting us with their events. We outlined out what we wanted our stores to look and feel like while we searched for landlords that would take a chance on us. We leaned into our personal networks of friends and family members to capitalize on skills and talents that were helpful to us. Emphasis on we – having a business partner that you work well with and that complements your skillset is invaluable as a fledgling business owner.
From 2016 to 2019, we grew events revenue to $1.5 million and opened five retail stores. We continued growing our team with people we trusted who were extremely talented. 2020 was a year of anxiety, pivots, research, self-reflection, humility, and strategic planning for post-pandemic possibilities. We also managed to close underperforming stores and replace them with more favorable locations and leases, using the market dynamics of the pandemic to our advantage. 2021 was by far our best year ever with nearly $4.4 million in combined event and retail revenues. As we continue growing toward 10+ stores and a goal of $3 million in event revenue, we continually lean into lessons learned and advice we can take from those we love and trust. Additionally, our community giveback programs grow more robust, which is a huge part of what we aim to do. Each day brings a new challenge, a new joy, a new idea, a new place to travel to, and new opportunities to engage with our Select Shades family.
From a roadside lemonade stand as a young kid to guiding two sunglasses businesses, I feel like I have more blessings that I ever deserved and it inspires me to keep dreaming!
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
The small, old-fashioned touches are impactful treasures. I have heard on numerous occasions from customers that a hand-written thank you card made their day. I like to write them whether or not I win the business. Even the opportunity to send a proposal is worth writing and mailing a quick thank you card. Also, recognizing customer’s birthdays – and especially their kid’s birthdays – is a tried and true way to deepen your customer relationships.
This is true both with external clients (customers) and internal clients (team members). I cannot articulate enough how much it means to hourly associates to receive an unexpected treat, whether it’s a hand-written thank you card with $5 Starbucks card or a phone call to recognize an achievement or anniversary. The investment in genuine appreciation will pay dividends in their performance.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think we all had some sort of pivot in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. For us, we had all this warehouse space dedicated to staging inventory for large events. Without any events to speak of, that space was sitting unused. However, other companies still needed space to send out care packets and other items to keep their employees engaged and inspired. We pivoted to offering logistics expertise and packing/sorting services. In our retail stores, we started engaging with customers with best-seller selections and meeting them on the curb with a tray of sunglasses recommendations we’d bring out of the store and to their car window. For our events business, we invested $30,000 into an augmented reality technology to make virtual sunglass gifting more impactful.
The biggest pivot was when I made the decision to leave Marriott in what was a comfortable, nicely-compensated career. The opportunity to create my own service that other people found valuable was invigorating to me. It continues to delight me every day. When I step into one of our stores, see a new hire start their training, or meet with one of our event clients, it’s like being a kid at Christmas.
Contact Info:
Website: select-shades.com
Instagram: instagram.com/selectshades and instagram.com/selectshadesevents
Facebook: facebook.com/selectshadesevents
Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/select-shades-llc
Twitter: @brimetimenole
Image Credits
Kelli Price Photography