Wreck your Rep 1-2-3
Yesterday I sat down with my oldest child at her new sewing machine, excited to discover this new form of handicraft with her. It's one of the many firsts I'd enjoyed looking forward to since the moment I first laid eyes on my sweet baby girl one March evening just over 9 years ago.
She'd been looking forward to this day eagerly since receiving the sewing machine as a gift recently. Every day, it was, "Mama, can we sew together?" As a mom who juggles building a business, homeschooling, and normal life with a husband who travels often and 4 young children, it seems like all I'd done up until yesterday was say, "Not now, honey."
So I knew it was time to make good on this promise.
We sat down together at this new machine – a kids' machine, yes, but it was a Singer®. And I knew from my own machine – the Singer my grandmother had bought as her last, intending to get a quality machine that could be passed down to me – that it was clearly the right choice for my daughter's introduction to sewing.
When we sat down to begin, I started by explaining the process of threading the machine. But when I went to thread the machine, the guard that had been placed around the needle mechanism to avoid lawsuits from sewn fingers prevented me from threading the needle easily. My daughter helpfully handed me the threader that had come in the kit with the machine, but just as soon as I tweaked the fine gauge wire to pass it through the needle's tiny eye, the wire detached from the threader's handle.
Finally, my patience started to wear thin, and my daughter wisely determined that this might be a "Daddy job," since we could see a tiny screw that might allow us to remove the needle guard.
This was indeed the trick, and we were soon working on some practice stitches, the white thread making a stark contrast against the dark blue scraps of Hawaiian print fabric I'd given her to practice on.
And then the thread jammed in the plate under the presser foot. And in the process of getting it unjammed, the needle itself just came right out of where it was supposed to remain attached, and the attachment point was so loose that it couldn't be reattached securely enough to be certain of its safety.
I hopped online (because every problem can be solved by Googling the right question, after all), and quickly found forum after forum in which disappointed parents had come to the conclusion that this Singer-branded kids sewing machine was a piece of junk that had, over the past couple of years, resulted in squashing many a child's desire to learn to sew because of its shoddy construction.
When my daughter murmured quietly, "I guess I'm not going to learn to sew after all," it just about broke my heart.
I can't tell you how surprised I was that a sewing machine branded by what had been a leading American maker of sewing machines turned out to be such a disaster.
Honestly – this experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that my next machine will likely be something by Pfaff, Viking, Elna or another brand – but it most certainly will not be a Singer!
Your brand equity is one of the most valuable possessions your company has, whether you're a multinational corporation or a one person operation. And while the work of building your brand takes blood, sweat and tears over time, it takes just one bad experience with your brand to bankrupt your brand equity in a heartbeat.
Attention to quality in your product and your service is the key to delivering an experience of your brand that your customers can't get enough of.
Forget that one small fact, and you can pretty much kiss your brand equity goodbye.
Did you find this post on branding useful? Tweet this! And leave a comment below!
