Northwest Aerospace News June | July 2019 Issue No. 9 | Page 35

Customer Advocates
Color Craft has five program managers
on staff, each of whom have daily
contact with the customers that they
serve.
“They are fifty-fifty advocates for the
customer and the company, meaning
that they advocate for the customers
as much as Color Craft itself,” said
Stewart. “Every morning at 9 am, the
whole company comes to a meeting to
talk about the critical issues confronting
our customers. A typical meeting may
result in one of our program managers
saying something like, ‘A customer
called us late yesterday, and they forgot
to order 100 widgets, and they need
them by Friday.’
“At that point, the only question we
ask ourselves is, ‘How do we solve this
problem?’ and not, ‘How do we solve
this problem and make money?’ I hear
people say that you need to make money
on every job, but I think that you need
to make money on every relationship. At
Color Craft, we are profitable on each
of our relationships — and if we serve
each customer really well every day,
the whole company will ultimately be
profitable.”
It’s an approach that not only keeps his
customers happy, but it also serves to
motivate his workforce.
“We have a bunch of millennials in our
workforce. I’ve got folks with tattoos
and green hair and total diversity in
terms of race and sex.” he said.
While millennials are often
characterized as lazy, entitled and
already looking for their next job on
the day they are hired, Stewart reports
extremely high employee retention.
“Over the past eight years, I can only
think of one employee who left Color
Craft to pursue another opportunity.”
Doug Stewart, President of Color Craft Inc.
The key, he said, is emotional engagement with the work that they are doing.
“They don’t want to just sit there and process orders. They really want to be
engaged mentally and emotionally with their work. Emotion is an important
part of life, and it’s an important part of the work we do here at Color Craft.
We’re right there with our customers — living their highs and their lows right
along with them. It’s a lot of fun.”
When he’s looking to recruit new employees, Stewart takes a page from the
Washington State Huskies’ football program.
“They’re looking for OKG — Our Kind of Guys,” he said. “We do run an ad
every once in a while, but our number one source for new people is referrals
from our current employees. The challenge is to find someone who has the
right character, and that’s hard to figure out through a standard interview
process. If a job candidate has the right mentality, we can teach them the
technical skills — but it doesn’t work the other way around.”
JUNE | JULY 2019 ISSUE NO. 9
35