Session Notes: Briana — Business & Operations Overview
2026-06-01 · Nate and Briana · Following factory floor walkthrough · ~40 minutes
Overview
This session took place immediately after the factory floor walkthrough. Nate and Briana sat down together (Briana with her laptop) to cover the business side: market position, revenue, organizational structure, and the end-to-end order workflow. Briana 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 — Briana shared financials, named specific pain points, and described where things work well and where they've repeatedly struggled.
Company History and Background
RCB Awards was founded in 1996 by Briana's mother, Cindi. The business grew out of the corporate recognition industry. Briana's father had been a regional sales representative for a company that manufactured 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 Briana's father's employer went through a poorly managed ERP system transition around Y2K and was unable to service customers effectively. He began working independently to source recognition products and deliver for clients, and that's how the business got its start. Cindi took over management early on and 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
RCB did approximately $3.5 million in sales last year. They were on track to exceed $4 million this year but lost a key account, which has changed that trajectory. Briana 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:
RCB Awards is the direct corporate brand — selling directly to end-user businesses like Milwaukee Tool, Waterstone Bank, and Kohl's Corporation. These are companies that need recognition products, event merchandise, or branded items and work with RCB directly rather than through a distributor.
Exquisite Images 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. RCB's products are listed on Sage, a software platform used broadly in the promotional products industry, where distributors nationwide can search for suppliers.
Revenue is roughly split between the two channels, with a slight lean toward the distributor side. Briana 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 RCB needs to do its job.
Strategic Direction
RCB and Exquisite Images are both in the middle of a rebranding initiative, which Sarah Collins has been involved in for a couple of years. Both brands are described as outdated in their messaging. The new brand they've been developing is called Breakwater — positioned as more refined and boutique, intended to attract distributor customers who are looking for a supplier that delivers a more premium, service-oriented experience. Briana shared some early brand brief materials during the session.
The broader strategy involves building a portfolio of retail brand partnerships — sourcing and offering recognizable retail brands (like Yeti drinkware, Biore, and Gooder sunglasses) through the distributor channel. End users, through their distributors, want branded merchandise from companies they recognize, not generic unbranded products. Competitors like Hirsch Promo have built their catalog around this model.
RCB had been pursuing this actively. They had secured what they believed to be an exclusive deal to list Gooder sunglasses on Sage — a meaningful competitive advantage since distributors could only get Gooder-decorated products through RCB. That arrangement turned out to be less firm than expected, and Gooder asked RCB to take the listings down while the situation is renegotiated. This contributed to a cost-cutting decision that led to ending the contract with the off-site art and order entry team (more on that below).
Despite the setback, Briana described the retail brand strategy as still the right direction — the experience with Gooder demonstrated real demand, with purchase orders coming in from companies like Intel and AWS. The distributor rebranding effort with Breakwater 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: - Wendy — creative director, handles high-end art files for customers. Strong design skills. - Steph — production art; transactional work (place the logo, size it, get the proof out). Less creative, more process-focused. - Megan — customer service, no art skills; has to request artwork from Wendy or Steph. - Rachel — joining Monday. Coming from the production floor, has a graphic design background. Briana noted that production-floor-to-customer-service is their preferred pipeline because those people understand what's actually happening in the shop.
Order processing (off-site, ending June 10th): A third-party company has been handling art and order entry for RCB. Their contract ends June 10th. The decision to end it was partly cost-driven (connected to the Gooder situation) and partly because there had been ongoing problems with the arrangement. That work will be absorbed by the internal team going forward.
Purchasing / sourcing: - Cindi (founder/owner) — still involved in finalizing purchase orders and production oversight. Actively training Andrea to take over the scheduling function. - Andrea — 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 Cindi has historically held.
Receiving: - Erica — handles goods receipt and job check-in.
Production: - Farrell — most experienced, runs the awards/trophies/sublimation work cell. - Kelsey — mentioned as running the Milwaukee Tool tumbler engraving run. - Karen — electrical engineer by background; working on production data analysis. Described separately from the rest of the production team.
Order-to-Ship Workflow
Briana 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 Cindi and Andrea, who finalize the purchase orders. Andrea handles the actual daily vendor ordering.
5. Receiving and inspection. Goods arrive and Erica receives and checks them into the job. For certain products — crystal awards are the example Briana gave — each piece is individually inspected for defects (scratches, chips). If something arrives damaged, a vendor claim is filed. Briana 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. Cindi and Andrea 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. Briana 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
Briana'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. Briana 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. Karen 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 Yeti tumbler, units per hour can vary significantly depending on artwork complexity, machine setup type, and other factors. Karen is trying to model that variation systematically.
Briana'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. Briana was immediately interested and said it would definitely be something she'd want to explore.
Rush Jobs and Client Timing
Briana noted that nearly everything RCB produces is for an event, and clients routinely don't place orders as far in advance as RCB would prefer. Rush jobs are common. To manage this, RCB reaches out to clients on the 11th month anniversary of their previous order — proactively prompting renewal before the client realizes they need it again. Briana described this as helpful for buying even a week of lead time on repeat programs.
Interest in AI Systems
Briana 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
- Briana offered to share the Breakwater 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 off-site team transition.
- Karen's data analysis work (the Claude + Excel setup) was flagged as something Nate wants to understand in more detail.