Session Notes: Calloway — Business & Operations Overview

2026-06-01 · Nate and Megan Calloway · Following factory floor walkthrough · ~40 minutes

Overview

This session took place immediately after the factory floor walkthrough. Nate and Calloway sat down together (Calloway with her laptop) to cover the business side: market position, revenue, organizational structure, and the end-to-end order workflow. Calloway led most of the conversation, walking through the company's history, how they serve two different customer channels, where they're trying to go strategically, and then a detailed walk-through of how an order moves from intake through shipping. The tone was candid and detailed — Calloway named specific pain points and described where things work well and where they've repeatedly struggled.

Company History and Background

Merrick Awards & Engraving was founded in the late 1990s by Sandra, who still owns the business; Calloway now runs it as CEO and the two work it closely together. The business grew out of the corporate recognition industry. The founding family had deep roots in custom corporate jewelry — high-end lapel pins, years-of-service awards — which was a significant part of corporate HR programs in the 1980s and 90s. That category largely faded as gold prices rose and HR budgets shifted.

The business started when an established recognition supplier stumbled badly and could no longer service its customers, opening a gap. Sandra began sourcing recognition products and delivering for clients independently, and that's how the business got its start. She has run it ever since. The company started with sandblasting and crystal etching, then expanded into the broader range of products and production capabilities it has today.

Revenue and Market Position

Merrick had been on a strong growth trajectory but recently lost a key account, which has changed that path. Calloway described this matter-of-factly — it's a setback, not a crisis, but it's real.

The business serves two distinct customer channels, which correspond to two separate brand identities:

Merrick Awards & Engraving is the direct corporate brand — selling directly to end-user businesses that need recognition products, event merchandise, or branded items and work with Merrick directly rather than through a distributor.

Brightmark Imaging is the wholesale brand — aimed at the promotional products distributor market. Distributors are companies that specialize in sourcing and selling branded merchandise to end users. They know the industry, they understand production specs and file requirements, and they take on the project management complexity on behalf of their clients. Merrick's products are listed in the industry distributor catalogs used broadly in the promotional products world, where distributors nationwide can search for suppliers.

Revenue is roughly split between the two channels, with a slight lean toward the distributor side. Calloway described distributors as easier to work with from a production standpoint — they send proper purchase orders and artwork files, they speak the technical language of the industry, and they understand what Merrick needs to do its job.

Strategic Direction

Both brands are in the middle of a rebranding initiative that has been in motion for a couple of years. Both are described as outdated in their messaging, and the goal of the refresh is a more refined, boutique positioning intended to attract distributor customers who are looking for a supplier that delivers a more premium, service-oriented experience. Calloway shared some early brand brief materials during the session.

The broader strategy involves building a portfolio of retail brand partnerships — sourcing and offering recognizable consumer brands through the distributor channel. End users, through their distributors, want branded merchandise from companies they recognize, not generic unbranded products. Some competitors have built their entire catalog around this model.

Merrick had been pursuing this actively. They had secured what they believed to be an exclusive arrangement to list a popular consumer brand through the distributor catalogs — a meaningful competitive advantage, since distributors could only get that decorated product through Merrick. That arrangement turned out to be less firm than expected, and the brand asked Merrick to take the listings down while the situation is renegotiated. This contributed to a cost-cutting decision that led to bringing order entry back in-house from an outsourced vendor (more on that below).

Despite the setback, Calloway described the retail brand strategy as still the right direction — the experience demonstrated real demand, with purchase orders coming in from sizable end users. The distributor rebranding effort is the near-term focus, as distributors are more accessible relationship targets than going directly to major consumer brands.

Organizational Structure

The team as described:

Customer service / inside sales:

• Carla — creative director, handles high-end art files for customers. Strong design skills.
• Bridget — customer service, no art skills; has to request artwork from the design side.
• Nicole — joining Monday. Coming from the production floor, has a graphic design background. Calloway noted that production-floor-to-customer-service is their preferred pipeline because those people understand what's actually happening in the shop.

Order processing (vendor transition):

An outsourced vendor has been handling art and order entry for Merrick. That arrangement is being wound down and the work brought back in-house. The decision was partly cost-driven (connected to the consumer-brand situation above) and partly because there had been ongoing problems with the arrangement. That work will be absorbed by the internal team going forward.

Purchasing / sourcing:

• Sandra (founder/owner) — still involved in finalizing purchase orders and production oversight. Actively training Tara to take over the scheduling function.
• Tara — assistant production manager. Handles the day-to-day mechanics of placing vendor orders and developing the production schedule. In the process of taking over responsibilities Sandra has historically held.

Production:

• A small, experienced floor team runs the awards, trophies, and sublimation work cells.
• Janet — electrical engineer by background; working on production data analysis. Described separately from the rest of the production team.

Order-to-Ship Workflow

Calloway walked through the full order lifecycle:

1. Order intake. Orders arrive primarily via email to a shared inbox managed by the customer service team. (A separate detailed conversation about this inbox and workflow was flagged for later in the day.)

2. Art and proof. The customer service team prepares or receives artwork, generates a proof for the customer, and checks inventory availability with vendors to confirm the product is available for a JIT order.

3. Customer approval. The proof goes to the customer. They approve it as-is or request edits. The loop continues until final approval is received.

4. Sourcing. Approved orders go to Sandra and Tara, who finalize the purchase orders. Tara handles the actual daily vendor ordering.

5. Receiving and inspection. Goods arrive and are received and checked into the job. For certain products — crystal awards are the example Calloway gave — each piece is individually inspected for defects (scratches, chips). If something arrives damaged, a vendor claim is filed. Calloway described this claims process as painful and time-consuming, and noted that it routinely introduces delays into what are already time-sensitive projects.

6. Production readiness. A job is considered production-ready when three things are true: the proof is approved, goods are received and checked in, and payment or credit is confirmed. Once all three conditions are met, the job enters the production queue.

7. Production scheduling. Sandra and Tara determine the daily production schedule together — what needs to ship today, tomorrow, next week, and what big jobs need to be started now to hit future ship dates. Physical work orders are printed and distributed to the floor. Calloway has tried to move to paperless work orders for roughly twenty years; the production team has resisted and she's come to see some logic in both approaches.

8. Production and QC. Operators work from their stack of physical work orders. For each job, the first unit is a setup test — artwork and settings are verified against the proof before the full run begins. QC at the end of the run is largely the responsibility of the individual operator; there isn't a separate QC step before jobs go to shipping. The production team uses Microsoft Forms-based checklists (stored on SharePoint) for setup and process tracking — different versions exist for new hires (detailed, step-by-step), trained operators (a lighter reminder-style list), and large jobs (different organizational logic than small jobs).

9. Shipping. Finished jobs move directly from production to shipping and out the door.

Labor Data Capture

Calloway's role is primarily sales and marketing, which means she needs production cost data — specifically labor time per job — to make sound pricing decisions. Understanding units per hour for different product types and job configurations is foundational to knowing whether something is priced correctly.

The current approach — Microsoft Forms collecting job data, exporting to Excel — is in use and the team has adopted it. It's not failing; it has friction and data limitations. Earlier systems were abandoned, but this one is working. The core issue isn't adoption anymore: it's that the sheer variety of SKUs and process combinations means the data density per category is too low to produce reliable estimates yet. Calloway used the phrase "getting on my soapbox about the why" — she cares a lot about this data, but the Forms system represents real progress.

The current approach: Microsoft Forms collects some data, which exports to Excel. Janet is running analysis in Excel and has started using Claude to interpret the data and look for patterns. The goal is to understand what variables drive variation in output — for something as seemingly simple as a 20-ounce tumbler, units per hour can vary significantly depending on artwork complexity, machine setup type, and other factors. Janet is trying to model that variation systematically.

Calloway's dream state was described clearly: fully automated, no human time required to collect and connect the data, and a dashboard that shows "here's what happened yesterday." She wants to eliminate the dependency on production team compliance entirely.

Nate described a workflow he uses personally — an ambient recording that watches everything happening during a work session and, at close, automatically generates a structured log — as a possible model. Calloway was immediately interested and said it would definitely be something she'd want to explore.

Rush Jobs and Client Timing

Calloway noted that nearly everything Merrick produces is for an event, and clients routinely don't place orders as far in advance as Merrick would prefer. Rush jobs are common. To manage this, Merrick reaches out to clients on the 11th-month anniversary of their previous order — proactively prompting renewal before the client realizes they need it again. Calloway described this as helpful for buying even a week of lead time on repeat programs.

Interest in AI Systems

Calloway was impressed by the AI-powered systems Nate uses to run his own consulting work and expressed interest in learning to build similar tools herself. She mentioned that Nate's Forge offering — personalized AI systems matched to a person's work — would be something she'd value for her own external consultants.

Follow-Ups

• Calloway offered to share the brand brief with Nate for context on the rebranding direction.
• Separate, deeper sessions were flagged for: the shared email inbox / order entry process, the freight tool, the labor capture workflow, and the vendor transition.
• Janet's data analysis work (the Claude + Excel setup) was flagged as something Nate wants to understand in more detail.