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What do Sting, Elton John, and Madonna have in common? Besides being international rock stars, theyall use theatrical backdrops designed and manufactured by custom drapery maker Sew What? Inc.Based in Rancho Dominguez, California, Sew What? provides custom theatrical draperies and fabrics forstages, concerts, fashion shows, and special events worldwide and has become an industry leader inrock-and-roll staging.Founded in 1992 by Australian-born Megan Duckett, Sew What? has grown from a tiny kitchen-and-garage operation to a multimillion-dollar enterprise, thanks to Duckett’s never-say-no approach tocustomer satisfaction. “When I see a problem, I just don’t back down. I find a way to overcome it and Iuse everybody I know to help me,” she says.What made it possible for a one-woman business that started in a kitchen to evolve and grow into amultimillion dollar company with 35 employees? Megan Duckett attributes her success to hard work,quality workmanship, and especially information technology.Sew What? has enjoyed explosive growth in recent years, reaching $4 million per year in sales by theend of 2006. Company president Duckett credits much of her firm’s rapid growth to its ability toleverage information technology and the Internet to drive sales. “Before we put up our Web site,sewwhatinc.com, our business was almost all local,” says Duckett. “But after launching the Web sitethree years ago, we now have clients all over the world. In fact, last year our revenue grew 45% on theprevious year’s sales, and this year we are on target to enjoy a 65% increase on 2005 sales. And nearlyall that growth came from Web-driven sales.”
Although the company’s Web site may take center stage, managing all the business the site brings inrequires a lot of effort behind the scenes. In particular, Duckett relies on a solid IT infrastructure to helpkeep the company running smoothly. “We are a customer-centric company,” notes Duckett. “It’s criticalthat we have excellent back-office information technology to manage the business and deliveroutstanding service to our customers.”Sew What? runs most of its business with Intuit’s QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Manufacturing andWholesale Edition software and Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system installed on a DellPowerEdge 860 server, sporting an Intel Xeon processor and 146 gigabytes of disk storage. According toDuckett, “Running our business requires a lot of storage. In addition to customer information and vitaloperational and financial QuickBooks files, we need to store thousands of drapery and fabric image files,customer instruction document files, and other types of data.” Sew What?’s additional computersupport includes an older Dell PowerEdge 500 server dedicated to a few smaller applications and avariety of Dell desktop PC systems for employees.
Sew What? started in 1992 as a part-time endeavor, with Duckett cutting and sewing fabric on herkitchen table. She went full time in 1997 and incorporated in 1998. The important role technology playsin running a successful small business hit home when she lost a big contract. The potential client saidthat without a Web site, her company “lacked credibility.” “Before losing that contract, I thought, ‘I runa sewing business, a cottage craft. I don’t need a Web site,” she says. Duckett admits she was rathercocky, mainly because she had grown her business “quite well” by word of mouth alone. “I quicklylearned the error of that thought process. You can’t have that attitude and stick around,” sheacknowledges.Losing the contract also coincided with a period of low growth between 2001 and 2002. That’s whenDuckett decided to embrace technology. Using Microsoft Publisher, she designed and built her own Website. “You figure things out and learn how to do it yourself when budgets are thin,” she admits.Duckett kept working to improve the site and make it better for her customers. A year later, feeling thatthe site needed refreshing, she signed up for a 10-week course in Dreamweaver and again completelyrebuilt the site. Yet another Web site reconstruction helped Sew What? grow into a company withcustomers around the world and a clientele list that includes international rock stars, Gucci, and RollingStone magazine.In 2005, Duckett decided she needed to improve the site’s navigation because “I wanted it to be sleekand to provide a really good customer experience. That was beyond my abilities, so we hired a Webmarketing consulting company to build a custom navigation system for the site.” She worked with thehired guns on branding, search engine optimization, overall design, and site layout. Duckett still providesall the content, including text and images. There’s also a Spanish version of the site, and theprofessionals tuned up the main site’s search features to include spelling variants for different English-speaking countries. For example, you can search for the American spelling of theater or the British andAustralian version, theatre.The site also lets potential customers review all kinds of color swatches and teaches them how tocalculate accurate measurements for their projects; the differences between a scrim, a tormentor, and atraveler curtain; the proper care and feeding of a variety of drapery materials; and a lot more.While perusing the Dell Web site one day, Duckett saw a news article about the Dell/NFIB Small BusinessExcellence Award. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and Dell Inc. present thisannual prize to one small business in recognition of its innovative use of technology to improve itscustomers’ experience. The winner receives $30,000 worth of Dell products and services, a lifetimemembership to the NFIB, and a day at Dell’s headquarters with Michael Dell and other senior executives.“The description of the kinds of businesses they were looking for perfectly described Sew What?”Duckett realized. “Everything they were looking for, we’d done, so I decided to enter. My husband [andbusiness partner] laughed and reminded me that I never win anything.” Writing the essay for thecontest caused Duckett to reflect on everything she and her employees had achieved over the years:“We got to sit back and feel really proud of ourselves. Just that process was enough to invigorateeveryone in our weekly production meetings.”
The contest judges also recognized Megan Duckett’s passionate commitment to customer satisfactionand use of information technology for business success, so they awarded Sew What? the Small BusinessExcellence Award. Winning the award proved to be a very emotional experience. Looking at the caliberand achievements of the nine other finalists, Duckett figured Sew What? would remain just a top-10finalist: “I could not believe that a big company like Dell—so entrepreneurial and advanced in everyway—would look at our little company and recognize it.”Like other small business owners, Duckett puts an enormous amount of physical and emotional energyinto her work. “Winning this award is so flattering on a personal level,” she says. “This business isingrained in every cell of my body, and to have someone saying, ‘Good job,’ well, in small business,nobody ever says that to you.”That may have been true previously, but Sew What?’s technology leadership and business successcontinue to earn recognition. In March 2007, the company received a Stevie Award for Women inBusiness for “most innovative company of the year” among those with up to 100 employees. A fewmonths earlier, Sew What? had received an SMB 20 Award from PC Magazine, which honors 20 of themost technologically innovative small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) each year. “Small andmedium businesses drive today’s economy. However, they often don’t get the attention and recognitionthey deserve,” said PC Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Jim Louderback. “We want to highlight the hard work,technological leadership, and innovative spirit of thousands of SMB companies throughout the world.”Duckett plans to use her prize winnings to add a bar code system that can track the manufacturingprocess at the company’s warehouse. In the drapery business, fabric is stored on a roll in the warehouseand then moves through different stages: receiving, cutting, sewing, shipping, and so forth. The scanningprocess will enable Duckett’s team to track how long the fabric stays in any given stage. These data willgive them a better idea of their costs, which will then help them produce more accurate price lists.“We don’t need to charge an hour and a half for labor if the cutting only takes an hour and 15 minutes,”Duckett notes. Currently, the company uses a handwritten system of sign-in and sign-out sheets that,she says, takes too long and introduces too many errors. “The new system will also let us track theprogress of individual orders,” she promises. “We’ll be able to provide better service by keeping thecustomer updated.
Based on the class lectures and the case answer the following questions:1) “If a building is an information system, the IT Infrastructure is its foundation”- elucidate the statement showing the components of an information system.2) How do information technologies contribute to the business success of Sew What? Inc.?