🏆 1st Quarter Recap – Growth, Updates & What’s Ahead

The Odoo Transition - A New Era Begins

Well—we did it! 🎉 Our goal was to have our new software system fully functional and launched with minimal issues by the end of Q1, and we’re excited to share that we’ve successfully met that goal.

While there are still some areas being refined, the core functionality is now in place. From here, the focus shifts to maximizing efficiency and improving the customer experience.

Here’s what we’re working on next:

• Customer Feedback & Reviews
  We’re planning to introduce automated follow-ups after your order is completed and delivered. This will give you a chance to share feedback, voice any concerns, or leave a review—helping us continue to grow and improve.
• Improved Forms & Customer Interface
  Some of our current forms and email templates are pretty bare-bones. We’re working on reorganizing and enhancing the layout and content across forms, emails, and the customer portal so details are easier to read and communication is clearer.
• Better Quote & Artwork Follow-Up
  Right now, follow-up reminders for quotes and artwork approvals are done manually—and that means sometimes things get missed. We’re building automation and tracking tools to ensure smoother follow-up and better turnaround times.
• Website Shop & Product Catalog
  Our biggest goal for the second half of the year is launching our new online shop. We're aiming to retire our old webstore by year’s end and replace it with a more robust, user-friendly platform. It will feature fully customizable products, complete with real-time pricing that includes engraving—making it easier for you to browse, plan, and order.

Online Customer Portals: What You Need to Know

We’ve made some recent updates to how customer portal accounts are created to ensure a smoother experience. Initially, we allowed open sign-ups on our website and included links in our auto-reply emails and order confirmations. However, this led to a problem where customers were unintentionally creating duplicate accounts that weren’t linked to their actual orders.

To prevent this, we’ve removed open sign-up. From now on, portal accounts will be created automatically when an order is confirmed, and a sign-up link will be emailed to you. This ensures your portal is properly linked to your order history and current activity.

Using the portal is completely optional, but it’s a helpful tool! You’ll be able to:

• View your current order status in real time
• Access past orders
• Review any outstanding quotes or invoices

We plan to continue expanding portal features in the future to better serve you. If you’d like access to your portal but haven’t received a sign-up link, feel free to call or email us—we’ll be happy to send one your way.

Invoices & Payment Access – Important Info

We’ve recently encountered some issues with invoice delivery and online payment access. After some digging, we discovered that in our new system, only the primary contact listed on an invoice has access to view and pay the invoice online through the customer portal.

Even if an invoice is emailed to multiple recipients:

• Everyone will receive the PDF,
• But only the primary contact receives the link to view/pay the invoice online,
• And only the primary contact can access the invoice through the portal.

This caused quite a bit of confusion early on, and we truly appreciate your patience while we worked through it.

To resolve this we are working on a modification that will allow all recipients CC'd on the invoice or quote to have access to the online payment link and portal view. 

If your organization has a billing account with a specific invoicing email, we’ll continue sending invoices to that address, along with the email of the order’s primary contact.

Tariff Talk – What It Means for Capital Trophy

As of this newsletter, we haven’t raised any of our prices—but we've been notified by nearly all of our vendors that price increases are coming, many of which will take effect by the end of this month or early next.

Due to the volume and variability of these changes, please note:

• Website pricing may be inaccurate until we have time to review and update it—likely not until late July or August after our busy season.
• Our quotes, which were previously valid for 90 days, will now be valid for 30 days. If a quote expires, you’re always welcome to request an updated version, but we can’t guarantee the same pricing.
• Additionally, due to the volatile nature of pricing right now, we may not always be able to honor quotes for the full 30 days. While we always strive to do so, we don’t order materials until a quote is confirmed. In some cases, pricing from our vendors may increase between the time we issue a quote and when it’s approved. We’re committed to absorbing small increases when possible, but if the price change is significant, we’ll reach out to discuss and provide an updated quote before moving forward.  

How Will Tariffs Affect Us?

While Capital Trophy doesn’t directly import goods, we work with national distributors, local vendors, and industry-specific wholesalers—many of whom do rely on imported materials. 

Here’s how it breaks down:

• We do 95% of our customization and assembly in-house, but we rely heavily on imported materials:
  • Glass & crystal awards
  • Trophy components & aluminum parts
  • Sheet metal
• While we source from 100% U.S.-based businesses, many of them purchase a blend of domestic and imported goods.
• Wood products and much of our steel are sourced in the U.S., but even U.S. steel prices are rising due to increased costs in their own imported raw materials.

What’s Next?

It’s still too early to know exactly how significant these price increases will be. That said, we have not yet implemented our usual annual price adjustments for 2025. Over the next month or two, we’ll be reviewing our pricing structure with the impact of upcoming tariffs in mind.

We typically aim for a modest 3% annual increase, though in recent years it’s been higher due to inflation and rising material costs. Based on vendor notifications we’ve received—some tied to specific products—we may see increases on certain items of up to 30%.

We’re watching these changes closely and expect to have a clearer plan later this year. In the meantime, we’re committed to transparent communication and continuing to provide you with the best value and service possible.

Staffing Update: Growth, Training & What It Means for You

🎉 Congrats to Sky & Brandon!

We’re thrilled to share that Sky and Brandon have successfully completed their 3-month trial and training period as Customer Service Representatives!

• Both are now fully trained to:
  • Handle customer inquiries via email, phone, or in person. 
  • Write quotes
  • Process orders 
    

Though they’ve primarily worked as Production and Design Technicians, they’ve stepped up in a big way! You’ll likely notice them responding to emails, sending quotes, and processing orders, all while continuing to assist with design and production.

⭐ Their efforts have been a huge help in keeping us caught up on communication. We’re so grateful for their hard work!

👏 Congrats to Steve!

Steve has also completed his first 3 months of training in production and is doing an excellent job!

• Production training takes 6–12 months, so he’s still learning,
• But he’s already proven himself to be a valuable asset,
• And is helping us stay on track during this busy season.

Future Hiring Plans

At this time, we’ve decided to pause hiring for an additional Production Technician.

While we do need another team member, we’re currently balancing:

• Ongoing training for existing staff
• The time and cost of fine-tuning our new Odoo system
• Financial strain due to potential supply chain price increases

Taking on another trainee right now would stretch our resources too thin. We’ll share an update when we’re ready to hire again!