Keystone keyboard photo Keystone Retaining Walls, Inc., a subsidiary of Contech Construction Products Inc., isn’t your typical manufacturing company. They’re arguably the nation’s best known name in retaining wall systems, systems featuring attractive, versatile segmental retaining wall units. But, technically, they’re not a manufacturer. Their role is in product development and design, technical sales, engineering and marketing. Because concrete is expensive to ship, local and regional manufacturers license the right to actually make the block and sell it to dealers, commercial contractors and retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Keystone’s marketing department develops a wide range of literature to support its licensee’s sales efforts, from saddle-stitched and tri- fold brochures to sell-sheets, case studies and highly technical construction manuals — many of which are custom imprinted with the local licensee’s name, address and logo.

The company’s marketing staff also supports its licensees with everything from step-by-step videos, to promotional embroidered shirts and caps, and do-it-yourself tools. The local manufacturer or dealer- retailer uses these materials as incentives at contractor seminars and, in the case of “how-to” literature, for use by consumers.

It’s a lot of stuff! In fact, Keystone produces, designs, and/or manages more than one hundred sixty different marketing-related items – print and promotional items that need to get across the nation quickly, on-demand, customized and in quantities ranging from one or two to thousands.

A challenging economy

As successful as they are, Keystone hasn’t been immune to the recession. Like many other companies, they were looking for ways to increase efficiency. Keystone’s marketing manager, Sean Rustad and his staff had been doing it all. Not just designing and producing the materials but fulfilling the orders as well — retrieving brochures from the warehouse and handling the packaging and shipping.

“We were spending anywhere from 25 to 30 percent of our time managing marketing-communications and promotional inventory. We were tending to our old online store and even doing the actual order packaging and shipping,” says Rustad. GLS Account Executive Noelle Stoyles had a better idea. “Noelle brought us a proposal to do not just our printing, but everything else — an e-store website, sourcing and stocking of promotional products, warehousing and real-time fulfillment.” It was a comprehensive, cost-saving solution, and Sean was willing to listen.

"The GLS business model fit our needs perfectly."

— Sean Rustad, Marketing Manager, Keystone Retaining Wall Systems

GLS: a new partner

After analyzing existing costs, including those of maintaining a warehouse and spending marketing staff time on extraneous operations, Keystone partnered with GLS. An all new online e-store was built and ultimately all of the companies’ literature and other products were shipped to GLS for warehousing and fulfillment — allowing Sean’s staff to do what they do best.

“The GLS business model fit our needs perfectly — to be able to combine everything from distribution and fulfillment to building a new e-store…took that whole process off our shoulders and fit right in with us. All we had to do was send Noelle the product information…and it’s a lot more organized and precise than what we had before.”

Keystone’s new online system was live within 90 days and includes features like print on demand and even what Sean calls “EOD,” embroidery on demand; customers can even order one or two custom embroidered shirts at a time — eliminating the need to maintain stock!

Would you like to learn more about how GLS can save you money by reducing your marketing communications load and letting your staff do what they do best? Contact an account executive today.

To learn more about Keystone Retaining Wall Systems visit www.keystonewalls.com.