ABOUT US:

Our business at Advertising Expressions is to promote yours. We do that by helping you get your name in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible, for as long as possible. The way that we do that competitively is by offering quick turnaround times and making sure that everyone knows exactly what to expect before we print anything. By offering proofs and revisions, we can ensure that it is just right for the you, not what we “think” is right.

We have been helping businesses in the community, promote their businesses or names by offering creative ideas for promotional products or design work. We have access to over 1 million promotional items from which to choose. Things like koozies, pens, signs, banners, feather flags, coasters, BBQ sets, poker chips, varieties of stress ball shapes and sizes. We have access to top-of-the-line brands like Brooks Brothers, The North Face, Nike, Adidas, to lower priced but high-quality brands like Port Authority, Gildan and Jerzees. So, with our variety of options, we should be able to find something that is in the right price range, the right brand, size, color, and quantity.

HISTORY

Advertising Expressions first opened in January 2007. It began as a home-based business, primarily so that Brenda, the original owner, would have something to do after the kids had left home.

Brenda quickly discovered the joy of serving people to meet their promotional needs. Every day she looked forward to learning something new about running a business, something that she had never done before. She also enjoyed meeting with clients or potential clients to learn how to serve them best. She ran the business alone for the first few years until the business grew into more than she could do by herself.

Advertising Expressions added one employee at a time as needed as the business grew, we moved out of the home environment to rent a place that would more adequately house the business with its equipment and employees.

In 2016, Advertising Expressions had grown to a point where Brenda was able to have her son, Zach, come to work for her full time with the hope that at some point she could retire and have Zach carry on.

One thing that Zach did to help diversify our screen printing business, was learning how to screen print using full color process. It took a while for us to fine tune this process, but since then, we have learned how to create and print some pretty great prints.

In Fall of 2021, we expanded our in-house offerings by buying an embroidery machine and another one in Spring of 2022. Though we have always offered embroidery, we had to outsource it. Buying these machines allowed us to have better control over our turnaround times of which we pride ourselves. It also allowed us to help our customers save money and stay competitively priced.

In 2022, Advertising Expressions was excited to name Zach as its new owner. Over the past 7 years of being in the business, Zach has excelled in finding new clients, serving the clients well, and becoming a great business owner where employees are glad to come to work and be part of a team where we all work together to accomplish our goals.

The driving force of Advertising Expressions has always been and will continue to be serving people in the best way that we know how, learning from mistakes, and moving forward to help even more people. We strive to run a business of high integrity and not just trying to earn a buck.

We believe that God led Brenda to begin Advertising Expressions and has led us as we continue each year to put Him first, knowing that all of our efforts are vain unless God is the One behind us. When Brenda first began her adventure, she took on the theme song, “Dive” by Steven Curtis Chapman with lyrics that include:

My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush, I hear a voice
It's telling me it's time to take the leap of faith
So here, I go
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I wanna be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I wanna go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in

That is how Brenda felt when she began and sometimes how we feel even now when business presents a new challenge. But we believe that God led us to this place and we don’t even want to turn back because the adventure of the past 18 years has been great!

Even as a fledgling business, Advertising Expressions weathered the storm of the recession in 2008-2010 because of the wide variety of promotional items and services that we offer. In 2020, we learned that we could serve businesses by printing face masks, hand sanitizers and t-shirts that helped to encourage their employees in a safe way of the times. In 2022, with Zach as the new owner, we more than doubled our sales and maintained that increase in 2023.  We are excited and humbled by the way that God has chosen to bless us and we look forward to many more years of serving our wonderful community.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Chamber Involvement

We have attended the Chamber Breakfasts, some of the ribbon cuttings, Business showcases, and business awards luncheons.

Schools and Organizations

We get involved with the community by offering a discount in exchange for letting us include our logo on their shirts. We have done this with Encore Theatrical Company, Theatre Guild, Schools, Carson Springs Baptist Conference Center (Newport) and many summer camps that are in the area. This offers discounted shirts for organizations, so that when people attend those events, t-shirts are available for anyone who wants one. Who doesn’t love a t-shirt??!! Another organization that we support is Summit ATA; the local taekwondo school. We support them by selling shirts at their events as a vendor. For the past seven years, Advertising Expressions has provided shirts for their tournaments and have grown with them in sales and profits to benefit their school.

Events

We discovered that people really like the idea of printing their own t-shirt even if they don’t care at all about the process that goes into getting the art, preparing the screens, and setting up to do it all.

When we bought our current building and had a Chamber ribbon cutting and open house, we made sure that we had a large amount of t-shirts on hand, we set up a screen that featured Tennessee but also had the Advertising Expressions logo on it. We had the image set up on two different screens so that everyone could have a choice as to which color of ink that they got. Every person at that ribbon cutting walked away with a t-shirt in their own size that they got to print themselves. Evidently, it was a popular idea because we had a better turnout for that Chamber Ribbon Cutting than many businesses do. Everyone seemed to have a really good time.

Later, when we had a bunch of spare t-shirts on hand that we needed to thin out, we offered the community a “Print Your Own T-shirt” Day. We set up 3 different designs that people could choose from. Everyone got to choose a shirt from our stash and choose which design that they wanted to print on their t-shirt. Of course, all the options had our logo below each of the featured designs. Again, everyone that attended seemed to have a really good time.

WHAT’S NEXT

We would like to more than double our sales over the next 10 years. That will require either growth into a new space or adding a second production space to what we currently have. We would like to add another manual screen printing machine, as well as an automatic screen printing machine. We would like to grow and add to our embroidery business as well. We think another single head machine as well as a 2 or 4 head machine would be ideal.

This is always one of the hardest questions to answer, because only God knows the future. But He has blessed us with continuous growth from year to year and we believe that He will continue to do so in His own time, provision and sovereignty.