Archives for February 2020

Have you considered giving one-of-a-kind enamel pins to your current and prospective customers? Promotional gifts such as these can really boost your business, and GS-JJ.com has exactly what you need.

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Consumers love having their own unique and customized style today. However, standing out from the crowd has always been a challenge.

How can you create your own unique style? You can start with customized accessories such as custom-made lapel pins, patches, belt buckles, lanyards, and more from GS-JJ / Enamel Pins.

GS-JJ.com is an e-commerce website that offers quality products and services directly to designers and end users.

GS-JJ / Enamel Pins is one of the largest manufacturers of promotional gifts and customized items. Their mission is to offer customers the highest quality products at competitive prices with on-time delivery. And they offer fast, free shipping.

About GS-JJ and Enamel Pins

GS-JJ is a division of EnamelPins Inc. To clarify, the EnamelPins.com website is devoted to lapel pins and custom enamel pins.

GS-JJ has been manufacturing promotional gifts and custom-made items for more than 20 years. They wholesale direct to some of the biggest distributors, franchise operators, and high-end customers in America and around the world. They work hard every day to be the best in their industry.

Unique Products Besides Enamel Pins

A custom-made lapel pin or a custom-embroidered patch can change the look of your denim jacket, leather jacket, coat, or backpack. You can even wear your custom-made enamel pin on your favorite baseball cap. And since it will be your own unique design, you can guarantee that no one else will be wearing it.

The GS-JJ product lines include:

• Custom-made enamel lapel pins
• Baseball trading pins
• Medals
• Lanyards
• Belt buckles
• Challenge coins
• Ornaments
• Embroidered patches
• PVC patches
• Key chains
• Silicone wristbands

GS-JJ offers much more, since they will customize just about anything and everything!

Fast Delivery on Enamel Pins

GS-JJ will produce your custom lapel pins in 24 hours using their advanced printing technology, no matter how many or how few enamel pins you need. In fact, GS-JJ is the perfect choice for your quality order, even if you have an urgent deadline. You can always purchase from GS-JJ with confidence

No Minimum Order

GS-JJ charges no mold fees for their custom-printed enamel lapel pins, whether you order a single enamel pin or a thousand. What’s more, they offer free professional design support, quality printing technology, and free air shipping.

Giving Back

In support of art and design, GS-JJ / Enamel Pins is offering an art student scholarship contest, called the 2020 Enamel Pins Scholarship. To this end, they are holding a design contest that is open to undergraduate students enrolled at accredited colleges and universities in the United States.

To enter, applicants must complete an online application form and upload designs for both a one-inch enamel lapel pin and a three-inch embroidered patch. Also, each entry must feature this semester’s theme of “Climate Change.”

The designs for both the enamel pin and the embroidered patch need to be designed without gradients, shadows, or photographs. To see examples and learn more about the design and manufacture of GS-JJ pins and patches, visit their website at https://www.enamelpins.com/video/custom-lapel-pins. There you will find images and videos to help you make your entry shine.

More About Entry Requirements

GS-JJ enamel pins are plated in the customer’s choice of metal color, including gold, silver, black, and so on.

In your design, all fine lines and other small details should be in the base metal color of the pin. Also, each color should be completely bordered by a thin stroke of the pin’s metal color. A line width of 0.50 works great for one-inch pins.

Deadline for Entries

The deadline for all entries is March 31, 2020. Only digital designs will be accepted. Fill out the online application form at www.enamelpins.com/scholarship/apply.

With your entry, upload to the GS-JJ FTP server a vector file for a one-inch enamel pin and a three-inch embroidered patch. Be sure to include your first and last name and the year in the name of the design’s file. For example, if your name is Henry Davis, you would name your file “Henry_Davis_2019_pin.Ai.”

Then, in the subject line of your e-mail include both your first and your last name.

The Winning Design

The winning design will be chosen by a trio of professional product designers from GS-JJ. The winner will be notified by both electronic and regular mail. Therefore, please ensure all of your contact information is correct on your application.

The restaurant industry has never been easy. Restaurant ownership is only becoming more competitive each day. Food delivery apps, new restaurants, and the booming price of commercial real estate all affect restaurant success. Statistics show that over half of restaurants close within the first year. Those which make it are often just barely hanging on. Consequently, restaurant owners must schedule their own and their employees’ time for profitability. Scheduling software does exactly that.

Featured Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

Restaurant scheduling software has transformed restaurants across North America. The right software streamlines and organizes the back-end of the restaurant to keep things functioning smoothly and save you money. So, let’s learn more about how it works.

Better Schedules, Sooner

The best restaurant scheduling software doesn’t just create schedules in less time than it would otherwise take; it actually produces better schedules, too. All employees will have their specific needs accounted for. While the software relies on automation to speed up the process, it also factors in manual inputs submitted effortlessly by the staff.

Staff can relay to their manager when they’re free to work through the app’s drag-and-drop calendar. This allows staff to stay on top of their scheduling and easily organize their personal lives. This also ensures savings on labor costs.

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels

Indeed, scheduling software produces schedules up to 80% faster than it would take otherwise. This can reduce labor costs in a restaurant by 1% to 3%. This is an important savings. After all, labor is typically one of the biggest drains on a restaurant’s finances.

Get Shift Replacements Quickly

No matter how effective the shift scheduling software is, sometimes employees have emergencies preventing them from coming to work. In such cases, a replacement for a shift is needed urgently. Even then, the software has your back.

Managers can contact all employees or specific teams as needed through the app. Each staff member receives an email notification alerting them to the urgent message right away. Whoever is free to take the shift can let everyone know in a group chat. So the problem is resolved before it blows up into a crisis.

This software keeps restaurant staffing organized well in advance, but it also has the ability to problem solve in the event of an emergency with modern, streamlined communication.

Scheduling Software Helps Labor Compliance

Every jurisdiction has laws surrounding labor which need to be complied with, or the restaurant could face penalties and fees. It’s important to avoid incurring such costs, and not to waste much time steering clear.

New restaurant scheduling software gives prompts before the schedule is locked in place. This helps create awareness when an employee qualifies for overtime pay. As such, they will never be given too many hours accidentally.

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Plus, your restaurant staff will feel energized and refreshed, since the software also ensures they get to enjoy the breaks they are legally entitled to. Some expenses in a restaurant are out of a manager’s control, like the cost of food or real estate. That’s why it’s essential to save money where possible, by implementing new technologies such as restaurant scheduling software.

Thinking about opening your own office? Whether you’re thinking about purchasing an entire property as a new workspace, leasing a room in a building among different businesses, or just hiring out a few desks in a communal space there are things to consider for each option.

Feature Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

Here are five of the top things that you should consider before investing in a workspace:  

Location, Location, Location

Location is key to opening your own office, which is why a lot of larger offices are in city centers. Having a central location usually means that there are reliable transport links, but also plenty of places to grab a coffee or some lunch.

Photo by Ingo Joseph from Pexels

However, rent can often be high in the center, so it may be worth looking on the outskirts if you’re on a budget. Also, ensure that the location you choose to set up in is in a place where your shop/office will be of interest. Do your research – if someone has set up a similar business to yours in the area and they didn’t last long, that may not be the ideal location. Find out what people are interested in in your prospective area.

Office Safety

This one really should be the top of your priority list. You must ensure that all of your employees are safe in the office. These sorts of things include fire safety, electrical risks, manual handling and having an on-site first-aid kit.

As a business owner, you must ensure that the risks and hazards in and around the office are properly labeled. Invest in some workplace safety signage to display any cautions, hazards, risks, and warnings to your employees and visitors.

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Keep in mind that without keeping your staff safe and putting up the correct signage your business could face some hefty costs in both finance and labor. For example, a member of staff could be off for weeks if they were to slip on a spillage at work and break their leg. They may even sue if the sign wasn’t up to warn them about the wet floor.

Finance Opening Your Own Office

It is all well and good to choose a huge office in the city center that needs a minimal amount of work done to it, but can you really afford this? You must think carefully about your budget and assess what you can and cannot afford when you are opening your own office. This will help you find a suitable property that won’t have you taking out a hefty loan from the bank. Consider leasing a property rather than buying one outright.

One way to grab a property at a bargain is to visit an auction and see what is going up for sale there. However, the property may need quite a bit done to it. Often, these properties need many improvements and are sold at a lower price. Still, there may be some good opportunities for a workspace bargain.

If the financing isn’t fully sorted prior to the auction, do not worry! A bridging loan may be able to tie you over in the meantime.

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Accessibility

If your place of work is somewhere that customers, clients, and employees will need to get to, then you need to make sure that it is accessible. Opening your own office near good transport links is a must because not everyone drives. Think about the nearest bus stop, train stop, and even tram or metro stop.

Adequate parking spaces are also a must. Alternately, make sure that there is on-road parking nearby. This will ensure that those who visit you won’t have any trouble accessing your workspace.

Additionally, consider those who are slightly less-abled and may require some help getting in and out of the building. For example, you might choose to install a ramp that can help those in a wheelchair in and out of the building. You could also make toilets disabled-friendly.

Going Green

More research and resources are available regarding sustainability than ever before. Companies should really think about how they can make a difference. So, when opening your own office, consider a space that has electric car charging ports for those who may need to charge their car during the day. Also, an office with lots of natural light will help you minimize the amount of electricity you need to use. This will also save you money in the long run.  

For some other ways to consider the environment and sustainability in your office space, follow the lead of CBS. They have made some great changes to adapt to having a green office space.

Use these tips to open your own office space.