Interviews | June 14, 2022
DMS Packaging Succeeds With a Strong Customer Focus
By Annabel Steele
Every Thanksgiving, millions of Americans turn their attention from turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie to finding the very best Black Friday shopping deals. Whether online or in-person, these consumers buy enough products to make the holiday one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
A few years ago, though, one augmented reality (AR) gaming developer found itself in a serious conundrum. It had a new gaming product set to hit shelves on Black Friday, but when it received the physical product from its overseas manufacturer, the specialized coating on the product wasn’t fully cured. The gaming developer, aware of time ticking ever closer to Black Friday, knew it needed to find a way to fix the situation, fast — so it turned to DMS Packaging.
DMS is an Illinois-based firm that focuses on shrink-wrapping, gluing, affixing, kitting, bagging, labeling, carton packing, display build/fill, hand assembly and much more. Because DMS does a lot of shrink-wrapping work, it has multiple heat tunnels. These heat tunnels played a key role in the company’s successful completion of the AR gaming project, says Bill Kirscht, vice president of sales and marketing.
“We put [the coated product] through our heat tunnels and engineered the right combination of temperature, speed and curing time,” Kirscht says. “We essentially developed a method to re-bake the product.”
When DMS found the right combination of factors, it jumped into action. The company received thousands of pieces of the product, unpacked and unwrapped them, passed them through the tunnels, performed quality inspection checks, shrink-wrapped them again and repackaged them, all the while conscious of maintaining individual set integrity. The AR gaming developer, anxious about its timeline, asked for frequent updates and sometimes sent engineering representatives to the DMS facility to ensure everything was running smoothly. But they didn’t need to worry — DMS got the job done, and the product was on shelves at major retailers by Black Friday.
“That’s not something we would traditionally do, but it just so happened that our equipment was a good fit for it,” Kirscht says.
Commitment to Customers
DMS’s willingness to jump into action on a major project with the tightest of timelines underscores its commitment to its customers. In fact, Kirscht says DMS’s customer base was one of the factors that most enticed him to join the company.
Kirscht first worked with DMS founder Dave Walters at Walters’ first company, FGI Print Management. When Walters sold FGI, Kirscht remained with the new owners for several years. But he eventually felt the itch to move on, and joined DMS after touring its facility.
“Here was an opportunity to get in the trenches of production and marketing teams, who understand the value of getting their product to market quickly and effectively,” Kirscht says.
DMS works closely alongside its customers for the duration of a project. The company holds production meetings multiple times a day to review schedules and confirm the status of in-house projects. Meanwhile, DMS also regularly carries out time studies to ensure it has the best possible sense of the timeline and costs for a project. This helps protect both parties from unexpectedly high costs, Kirscht says.
“We’re all labor, so if we find that it takes us 60 seconds to do something we thought was going to take 45 seconds, there’s a difference we have to make up,” Kirscht explains. “We have to walk that fine line of making sure we’re cost-effective for them, but also taking on good projects for us.”
DMS also prioritizes its customers through its informal, welcoming atmosphere. The company often hosts customers or potential customers for tours of its facility, allowing them to actually meet DMS employees and see the machinery that will be used to complete their projects. This personalizes the entire process for the customer. Kirscht estimates that about 90% of the time a prospect tours the facility, DMS ends up securing the business.
Perhaps one factor swaying these prospects is the fact that DMS has, by design, arranged its machinery to be as flexible as possible. The machinery can be rearranged or reconfigured depending on the customer’s needs, allowing DMS to find creative solutions to pressing problems. This is helpful for all the company’s customers, which run the gamut from small businesses to large printers. But it’s especially useful for DMS’s smaller customers, Kirscht says.
“Small companies and projects many times require special considerations, which we can provide,” he says.
Embracing Brand Chain
DMS used to be a member of Brand Chain, but decided to step away temporarily when the pandemic hit and in-person events went on hold. After the association’s rebrand last year, Kirscht’s interest was piqued, and the company decided to rejoin.
Kirscht’s focus is primarily on networking with fellow members. He attended a recent virtual member meetup, during which he met several others in the community. Within a week, Kirscht had a lunch meeting with a member he met, and had also followed up with others by phone.
“Everybody seems friendly and willing to work together, to reach out and share information with others,” Kirscht says.
He is interested in potentially attending Brand Chain events in the future. In the meantime, Kirscht has been impressed with Brand Chain’s communication strategy. He appreciates the email updates shedding light on events, opportunities and information. Kirscht enjoys that Brand Chain members don’t have to dig through the website to learn more about the association’s opportunities; the information lands directly in their inboxes.
“In so many organizations, you have to go look for something. It starts out like, ‘Well, if I have time I’ll look once a week,’ and that turns into once a month, and then it becomes every six weeks. Brand Chain is proactive in pushing information out,” Kirscht says. “If it’s not pertinent, you don’t have to do anything, but if it is pertinent there’s an opportunity to jump in right away. I think that’s awesome.”
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Packaging Member Spotlight DMS Supplier