“What’s with the name shirts?” … We get this question a lot! Everyone wants to know the story behind BCC Live‘s name shirts… so here it is!
History Of The Name Shirts
Back in 1998 we started out as an IT business named CTS – Computer Telephony Specialists. Computer telephony integration is when you integrate telephone systems with computer systems to eliminate the need for a physical phone. Our website was bouldercounty.com and, at the time, the plan was for it to be an online magazine. However, as we got our business up and running, plans quickly changed.
One of our first customers was Precision Plumbing. Tom Robichaud was the owner, and became our business mentor. We first started working with Precision when we had 5-7 employees. Our first project was networking two computers together, and we built from there.
We’ve modeled much of our business development around what we learned from Tom and Precision Plumbing. We even bought our first service van from them!
Even though we were an IT company, much of the work we were doing was similar to what Precision was doing. We were going out into the field and completing service… we just had fewer customers. Most of our customers were at offices and worksites.
You’re probably wondering how any of this has to do with our name shirts, right? We’re getting there!
How We Got To Where We Are Today
Throughout the years we started to develop a brand, which is known as BCC Live today. We started moving into event production work, and the uniforms our staff wore were BCC Live shirts. As we continued to grow in both IT and event production, we created a more ‘official’ uniform policy… the name shirt! The first version of the shirt was grey and over time, as we did more event work, we moved to black shirts.
As we began traveling to more events and meeting more people, we began to see the true value in the name shirts. People knew our names. We found that both athletes and staff would approach us with questions during events, because they knew our names. People we’d never met would know our names, and seeing us in our shirts at different events helped people remember us, which helped us build relationships.
More Than Just A Uniform
Today, we have an apparel policy in place that doesn’t mandate name shirts. They’ve become a right of passage, and we don’t give them out to just anyone. Our new staff have to have been with us for a while, shown commitment. There are vendors and customers we have given name shirts to, because they mean a lot to us. We see these name shirts as a badge of honor, and giving them to non-BCC staff means we see them as an honorary member of our team.
Our team prioritizes wearing their name shirts on race and on event days. Sometimes customers request we wear them. BCC staff members get lots of questions when they’re wearing them at events. “Are you really Dave?” “Is that a new trendy mechanic shirt?” Most of our team members can never get used to people calling them by name… Dave always thinks, “how do I know this person?” and it’s never his first thought that he’s being called by name because of his shirt.
Sometimes people try to be funny and act like they know our staff… We meet a lot of people on the road so it’s always a fun game to try and remember if we actually know someone or if they’re just being funny.
“What’s with the name shirts?” … now you know! It’s all centered around Precision Plumbing, our business mentor and dear friend Tom. So next time you see us in our name shirts, please feel free to come say ‘hey’ and call us by name!
