January 6, 2009

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Recent Projects

Who is Sawtooth Graphics?

Sawtooth Graphics is a professional IT services and graphic design firm based in Caldwell, Idaho (a small suburb of Boise). We officially commenced operation in March, 2005. Our business offices are located at 2302 Terrace Dr., Caldwell, Idaho.

Why we are so effective...

Our strengths come in large part from the diverse background of our founder and principal, Steve Johnson. From modest beginnings in the 1970s behind the parts counter of an auto/farm/logging equipment parts store in LaGrande, Oregon, to the owner of a paint/coatings application business in Boise, Idaho, in the 2000s, he has been involved in many aspects of small- and medium-sized business operations. This background gives him a unique perspective to Internet site development because of his wide range of experience in sales and marketing, retail management, automotive and equipment sales, inventory management and control and as a small business owner. He has:

• worked inside sales in auto and equipment parts, and in the plumbing and electrical industry
• managed a store for a major retail auto parts chain
• been a sales/fleet sales manager for a large Dodge auto dealership, as well as financial services manager
• managed the inventory of another large auto dealership (Ford)--in excess of 1000 new vehicles in stock at any one time, and 20-30 sales per business day
• owned and operated a paint & coatings application company, with gross sales of over a quarter-million dollars annually
• been involved in web site development and application programming since he first bought a Commodore 64 computer in the 1980s, in addition to being a semi-professional photographer.

What does all that mean? It means that we are able to understand from first-hand knowledge the challenges that businesses need to solve, and we can look at them from both the standpoint of the business owner AND the customer. With your input and our experience, we can develop a site that is effective for what you need it for, whether it's from a sales and marketing standpoint or information retrieval and storage, to online storefront establishment and management.

Quality counts

Above all, we believe that quality is the prime objective. The end result of our work should be a product that does the job it is designed to do, in an appealing package. Time and budget constraints are a fact of life in business, and we strive to complete our projects well within the paramaters that are set for the project.

Who is 'we'?

You'll notice that throughout the web site, we speak of 'we'. A business usually doesn't happen by itself, and that is the case with Sawtooth Graphics. When necessary, we contract with copywriters, specialty programmers, and other IT talents when we determine that they are needed. And though we may out-source parts of the project (it doesn't happen very often), you will probably never know. They are paid by us, work for us, and the end product is our own--it has our name on it. Every outside source that we may work with has proven to us that they work with the same ethic we do: first-class quality within time and budget requirements. We DON'T do everything ourselves all of the time, because OUR first concerns are your quality finished product, and your ongoing satisfaction with that product.

How we work

We take projects from start to finish through a defined process. This is one of the basics of project management. We always know where we are on the timeline, and where we are in relation to the budget. This page spells out in a little more detail and this page outlines some of the tools and techniques we use.

©2009 Sawtooth Graphics