Dear Business Owner,

If you have made it to this page it was by invitation by a partner in our small business referral group.  Our group is composed of 14 to 16 small local Northwest Indiana businesses that collaborate and refer one another to our potential and existing customers.

How Does The PartnerShip Work?

Let’s face it.  You have met many a business owners that you would like to refer and exchange business with but it becomes a bit ridiculous to carry 15 different business cards with you.  Odds are in fact unless you are asked by your customer for a referral you likely won’t offer one up.  Our tight knit networking group has collaborated together to create a referral catalog known as the Northwest Indiana Home Improvement Magazine as pictured above.  The business owners involved have a commitment to handing out the guide to each and every customer they encounter at bids, home shows, events and more all in an effort to share YOUR great business with THEIR great customer all in a non-competitive format.    What do we mean by non-competitive?  Essentially it means that once we have a business category filled there will be no competition for that business partner.   Our group will have 1 Deck builder, 1 landscaper, 1 window cleaner and so on and no more for each home improvement category and we tend to focus on small business owners who have skin in the game.  We want owners who are out there in the sales field and can give us a whole hearted commitment to referring the other partners in the group in return for the referrals to your own.   If you don’t feel your capable of handing out our referral guide please stop here and go about your standard business marketing.

What does it cost?

For the Spring 2012 run we will be printing 25,000 catalogs with 14 to 16 partner ads in them.  Each partner will receive at least 500 catalogs based on how many estimates you normally do.  Those who funnel out 1500 bids will be provided with more and those who run out will have more available to them.  The cost to place your company in our referral guide is $590.00.  This gets you a full color full page ad within the book for your print ready artwork.  I would recommend you provide some coupon offers or call to action in your ads in order to track results.

What do we need to provide for artwork?

The artwork needs to be sized to fit an 8.5″ x 11″ catalog page at 300dpi.  We can use a hi res .jpg, .pdf, .eps, psd or .tiff file.  It is important that the resolution is as high as possible for good clarity.  72 dpi files will print and look “ok” but be grainy and pixelated.   If you need assistance in refining the artwork feel free to contact me.  If you need artwork from scratch we can provide it for a fee of $100.00 however I prefer if at all possible you provide the artwork ready to print.  Again if you need any assistance contact me (Greg Rentschler @ (219) 405-4350) and I would be glad to help.

While our major distribution plans involve the guide as a handout to our partners customers we do have several other avenues we intend to explore.  We will be handing our guide out at the Illiana Garden Pond Show in April to the 3000 or so attendees.  We will also be doing some door to door experiments in higher end neighborhoods to see what kind of response we get.  We are also exploring the possibility of doing some route mailings through the postal service however this will incur an additional investment from the partners in our group.  It is our goal to have this ready to go to print in the first week of April therefore if you are interested we need your commitment asap.  With you commitment I will need your artwork and investment soon thereafter so I can include you.  Partners who haven’t paid prior to us sending this to print will unfortunately have to be excluded from the publication.

As a group we are also in discussion about printing a Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter edition to this referral guide.  This is NOT set in stone at this time but we’re exploring the options and will make a decision after we see some results.  AGAIN – we are open to ideas so if you have any please forward them to me at timberseal@comcast.net and we can discuss them as a group.

So that’s about it!  If you’ve been invited to explore this partnership take a few days to consider it.  We as a group believe we can all bring each other more high quality business through a more consistent referral program.  Below you will find a list of our current dedicated partners.  If you have any further questions, comments OR suggestions please email me.  timberseal@comcast.net

CURRENT PARTNERS

TimberSeal, LLC  –  https://www.timberseal.net

Indiana Pro-Wash   – a new division of TimberSeal, LLC covering residential, commercial and industrial pressure washing

Landscape Illumination  – http://www.landscape-illumination.com

Landscape Aquagation – http://landscapeaquagation.com/

Aqua Systems of Valp0 – http://ilovemywater.com/landing.aspx

Expert Remodeling – http://www.expertremodelingllc.net

Border Magic of NWI – http://www.BorderMagic.com

1st Class Decks – http://www.FCDecks.com

Nature Stone – http://www.NatureStoneFloors.com

Great White Hard Surface Specialist – http://www.gogreatwhite.com

Albert the Chimney Sweep – http://albertthechimneysweep.biz/

Vega’s Landscaping – http://www.vegas-landscaping.com/

MasterTech Pest Control – http://www.Ihavebugs.com

BREN-MARK Window Cleaning – http://www.Bren-Mark.com

KNZ Heating and Air – http://knzheating.com 

About Me:

My name is Greg Rentschler and I am the President and Owner of TimberSeal, LLC of Valparaiso.  I’ve been in business for 16 years in Valparaiso and have a background in graphic design.  Our other company, the Business Card Connection was started back in 2002 as more of a hobby but my experience in layout and graphic design and connections for affordable printing allow me to pull this together in house without the high mark up.  The costs associated with printing this publication have simply been divided up among the participating business owners.