InfuseSA in the Community: Ibettink
This week we’d like to give a shout-out to Ibett Shipley and her Ibettink at Huebner & Bitters in far north-central San Antonio. They specialize in embroidery, invitations, and other personalized products and gifts, all delivered with stellar service.
The personalization is further enhanced by custom Ibettink online stores, free of charge for various organizations, schools and associations. They stick their respective logos on this coffee cup or that towel, and voila; it arrives at their doorstep in 10 days or less.
Ibettink’s survival during the government lockdowns of the last couple years showed classic American grit. They did it with creativity, partially pivoting to making masks when no one knew for sure what was going around, and wanted to protect themselves and others.
They also printed up the first batch of InfuseSA shirts that you see us wearing around town.
Ibettink is a great example of a couple things. One, when a company succeeds in satisfying customers, it expands, until they tap out the local customer base.
Then, if they haven’t already, they start selling outside their local borders. This brings in revenue from abroad (whether outside their town, state or country). In some instances, they might even open branches in other jurisdictions.
This virtuous wealth-creation cycle leads to several small business opportunities, as it did for Ibettink.
Enterprising entrepreneurs open restaurants, salons, autobody shops, etc. Some might franchise dry cleaning, or postal delivery stores chains, for example. Any of the former, like Ibettink, could find a niche, and morph into the latter, and the cycle keeps flourishing.
We salute establishments like Ibettink who navigated the thicket of public bureacracy to open their doors, and we work toward seeing those regulations slashed so more can enter the fray and push our society to more prosperous heights.
[…] Maybe in addition to appealing to residents to “buy local,” our elected representatives should also urge them to “invest local.” […]