Today I want to discuss AI. That’s right. Artificial Intelligence. Are you sick of hearing about this yet? Probably.
But there is a reason why this discussion is important. From what I see, many shops are nibbling around the edges when it comes to adopting AI in their businesses. Sure, there are shops that are all in, and I’ve been chatting with those folks, too. But it’s the ones who seem dubious about AI, who fear it, and to some degree lambast any AI idea that comes along, that I’m directing this article towards.
Today, we will use two hypothetical shops as examples to illustrate a looming productivity gap.
Shop A is owned by Joe. He thinks AI is a joke. He comments all the time to anyone who posts about AI that it is unethical, it steals jobs, and it is a menace to society. Joe wants to keep things working the way he’s always done them. He feels he’s a craftsman, and his personality is one of stubbornness and closed-mindedness.
Shop B is owned by Maria. Maria hears a lot of good things about AI. She started her business a few years ago and has played around with using AI a little bit, but hasn’t fully gone all in yet. Maria feels she’s dedicated to quality and professionalism, and that her personality is marked by curiosity and open-mindedness.
Two Shops, Two Futures
Both Shop A and Shop B have identical characteristics. They have the same type of customer base, use identical equipment, have the same staff size, and, really, the same opportunity for success.
Five years from now, one of these shops will be thriving, while the other will be struggling. Why?
It wasn’t the talent. Or luck. Or some sort of magic pricing. It was leverage.
The next competitive advantage for the decorated apparel industry will not be access to AI. Everyone has that. It will be based on how effectively shops use AI. That’s what we are going to discuss.
Inflection Points
Every industry has a history of inflection points. The decorated apparel industry sure does.
I don’t know if you realize this or not, but we didn’t always have:
- Photoshop
- Automatic printing or embroidery equipment
- Digital printing equipment
- Digital embroidery files
- Shop software
- Social media
- Websites
- Online Stores
Or hundreds or even thousands of other things you take for granted every day. Each one of these innovations had its share of resistance. If you look at an adoption curve, you have folks in different segments. Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.
Regarding AI, where do you feel your company fits in? When new ideas take hold, there is always resistance, and then eventually those ideas seem normal.
By the way, most people don’t actually resist the technology. What bothers most people is the uncertainty. They don’t fear the idea; they fear the change. For them, learning something new sometimes means giving up what they have worked so hard to achieve and train for.
The biggest threat here isn’t artificial intelligence or its use. It is staying too attached to yesterday’s way of working. Think about Joe and Maria here and how they see things. Which one is more willing to experiment and build things for the future using AI?
The Productivity Gap is Already Forming
Currently, from what I’m seeing, hearing, and experiencing, a productivity gap is already forming. There is a huge difference between shops that are leveraging AI and those that are motionless on the idea.
Shop A, owned by Joe, is still manually quoting, following up, marketing, and documenting.
Shop B, owned by Maria, has built new AI-assisted processes for quoting, lead generation, content creation, SOP creation, and data analysis.
Remember, both shops have the same number of employees. Maria’s shop is simply getting more accomplished daily. The AI tools are not replacing any of Maria’s staff. What they have built and deployed simply augments the work they perform. Maria’s average workers perform better. Her strong performers became exceptional.
AI is creating that leverage. What do you think will happen down the line when one of Maria’s staff members regularly turns in the performance of three of Joe’s?
The Great Separation
What we are already seeing are shops that have embraced AI, outpacing their competition. At the heart of this is the idea that small advantages, repeated daily, evolve into enormous advantages over time.
So when Maria sends a quote 30 minutes faster than Joe, she will win more business in the long run. This naturally flows into other facets of the business too, with the deployment of AI automation. Manual tasks are replaced with AI-automated ones.
In the beginning, as Maria is working out the details, the differences feel small. Awkward. And frankly, it takes effort to get them right. But over time, these gains become massive.
Everything Maria installs in her shop to save time, replace a manual task, help her comprehend information, or replace a task compounds the effort. The consistent, continuous improvement builds momentum.
AI Is Not The Story Here
I want to challenge a notion here. On social media, trade shows, and discussion groups, I see a lot of questions like “How do I use AI?”
That isn’t the question you should be asking. Instead, use “How should I be replacing a manual task with an automated one?”
What would be the impact on your shop if a human didn’t enter an order into the system ever again? Can you imagine if the labor dollars you are spending on that one task alone were instead spent on a better customer experience or customer relationship-building?
What if you focused on the known bottlenecks:
- Artwork revisions or mockups
- Customer emails
- Order Communication
- Production Scheduling
- Sales Lead Generation
- Sales Workflow
- Order Entry
- Marketing Content
- Employee Training
AI isn’t a tool story. It is a system story. Consider how you might adopt an AI idea into your team's natural way of working. That’s what Maria is focused on, and Joe is avoiding. Don’t just think about AI as a tool. Think about it in terms of your workflow. Ask yourself:
- How does information move?
- Where are the delays?
- What creates friction?
- What can be automated?
- How is information being used to make decisions?
Show Me The Money
What Maria is discovering, and what Joe is avoiding, is that AI isn’t interesting. More money is interesting. For her, it is all about thinking about how she can improve a business outcome.
- How can she turn around a quote faster, with better accuracy, and consistent pricing?
- What are the ways she can discover more of her ideal customers to feed her sales engine?
- How can she automate steps in the order entry, purchasing, and receiving processes to impact production and shipping?
- How can she automate art approvals to get the order moving with less effort?
- How can she understand the shop metrics and KPIs to make better decisions, help with employee performance reviews, and more closely tie actual job performance to pricing?
For Maria, she isn’t “buying” AI. She is investing in ways to deliver more revenue, capacity, efficiency, and profit. It is all about the outcome and results.
Humans Become More Valuable, Not Less
One of the concerns that Joe constantly shares is that “AI is replacing people.” He sees and hears a lot of noise on social media and in his peer groups that only discuss the negative aspects of AI. It is a valid concern and should be taken seriously.
Maria had those same concerns. She sees and hears those same arguments. However, as she has actually tried and succeeded in adopting AI into her business, what she has discovered is almost the complete opposite of the noise about AI.
She’s found that by using AI, the machines and automations she’s set up help her team actually do more meaningful work. Her shop still has great people working there. However, her team spends more quality time establishing trust and building relationships. They have time for that.
What she’s had to grapple with is how to introduce AI into her shop’s workflow and SOPs without creating fear. Maria was open and honest about it and started with simply experimenting and working to understand the basics. The goal was to adopt AI best practices, with her team growing alongside the use of AI.
The Real Risk With AI
The real risk with AI isn’t all the amazing things it can do. The real risk is standing still. One day in the future, Joe will look up and wonder what happened. “How is Maria able to do all of those things so well?”
What Maria is doing is smart. She’s combining the best use cases of AI and automation into her workflow. She still has the human touch in conversations, networking, and experience. That isn’t going away. But how she’s using AI to create better outcomes is exactly the right move.
The real risk with AI is waiting to start.