Ricoma Insights Quarter 3 2020

END OF THE YEAR 2020 EDITION NEW INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CENTER ALL-IN-ONE CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTER OPENS IN CHINA FEATURING… RICOMA! DISCOVER WHERE RICOMA’S CONTENT HAS RECENTLY BEEN FEATURED RICOMA INSIGHTS PUBLICATION • ISSUE 00011

Date: 01.01.2021 Dear Colleagues and Business Partners, Happy New Year! While 2020 had its ups and downs, Ricoma never slowed down and faced every challenge head on. Despite being socially distant, we banded together to support our community of distributors and customers alike as the past year was hard on millions of people across the globe. Despite the challenges, we became a closer, more cohesive organization. We not only survived the crisis, but also experienced record growth and had one of the best years in our company’s history. I’m so proud of everyone in our US headquarters and our factory in China. As I look forward to 2021, I’m excited and confident that things will only get better from here on out. To that end, Ricoma will continue striving towards ultimate technological optimization, updating its current products, and innovating new products to create the most user-friendly and intuitive equipment in the textile and garment decoration industry. In addition, Ricoma will continue forming successful partnerships with colleges and businesses to offer more people a wide range of high-quality machinery while also bringing awareness to the Ricoma brand. Lastly, Ricoma plans on developing new resources, events and more to connect with distributors, customers, and the custom apparel industry at large. Our ultimate goal is to take our creativity to the next level as we discover new ways to become the go-to brand for custom apparel machinery and education and to further help our customers in over 150 countries succeed in their businesses. FRANK MA Founder & President

4th QUARTER • 2020 EDITION In This Issue... You can read through the News and Events section to get the latest updates on the embroidery industry and Ricoma. Check out the Features section to get professional machine embroidery tips and insights. Finally, dive into the Profiles section to read exclusive interviews with Ricoma staff. FEATUREs News + Events 2 RICOMA OPENS NEW INTERNATIONAL SERVICE CENTER All-in-one customer service center opens in China 3 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE A HUGE SUCCESS Learn how Ricoma’s Virtual Conference stirred up engagement 4 DONGGUAN SEWING EQUIPMENT EXHIBITION Ricoma attends first trade show post Covid-19 shutdowns 4 DISTRIBUTOR PORTAL UPDATES MT-8S series quick start guide added to portal 5 FEATURING RICOMA! Discover where Ricoma’s content has recently been featured 6 6 RESOURCES THAT WILL MAKE YOU AN EMBROIDERY EXPERT Explore our comprehensive list of embroidery resources, guides and videos 9 TIKTOK SUCCESS! Ricoma grows TikTok following 10 ULTIMATE CAP EMBROIDERY CHALLENGE Ricoma challenges the MT-1502 against two MT-1501s in embroidery face off 11 YOUTUBE ROUND UP Check out Ricoma’s best videos of 2020 PROFILES 12 EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT Meet Ricoma’s Sales Manager, Jason Bartolotta 13 DISTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT Meet Hemanth Krishna from Krishna Sewing Solutions 14 UPCOMING EVENTS Don't miss our upcoming tradeshows

Ricoma Opens New International Service Center All-in-one customer service center opens in China Although the global market took a hard hit in 2020 \"The purpose of our new customer service center is to due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ricoma maintained improve our service efficiency, quickly respond to customer a growth rate of more than 60% this year, and our requests, efficiently solve customers’ various after-sales overseas markets have also maintained a relatively high problems, and improve customer satisfaction,” said the growth rate. newly appointed manager of the customer service center, Due to this continuous expansion of our market and Ms. Allis Hou. the growth of our sales network to over 150 countries This one-stop shop for all global customer service initiatives and regions around the world, Ricoma's original after- includes overseas distributor training, Chinese end-user sales service needed to be revamped in order to meet the training, optimization of our parts ordering process and growing needs of our company. customer satisfaction tracking. So, in order to better serve customers and improve service In addition, this new center will allow for improved service quality, Ricoma has opened a brand-new customer service with faster response times and more resources for better center in China for distributors and domestic Chinese quality help for our customers and distributors, thereby clients. This center combines our original overseas and enhancing the complete Ricoma experience. domestic after-sales service departments into a massive Chinese customer service hub. 2

Ricoma’s Virtual Conference Was A Huge Success! Discover how Ricoma’s Virtual Conference stirred up engagement In a world where we must remain six feet apart, it is Needless to say, this virtual conference stirred excitement crucial for the future success of your business to think of for our event in March, promoted brand awareness and creative ways to connect with customers, colleagues and helped foster closer relationships with customers who were everyone in your industry. For that reason, we at Ricoma able to participate in the live. While tradeshows might be had to shift gears and try something we’ve never done out of the question due to current circumstances, this event before. was just as engaging, if not more, than a traditional in- Due to COVID-19 safety precautions, we decided to person event. postpone our highly anticipated educational conference Adapting to a new normal may be a challenging task for DecoSummit and rescheduled it for March 2021. However, established businesses, but it can also lead to new and we wanted to give everyone a preview of what's to come exciting projects that will boost success. So we encourage for next year’s event, so we hosted our first-ever live virtual our distributors to start thinking outside of the box in conference! Although this was our first time hosting such order to reach potential customers. Keep in mind that any an important virtual event, we understood that trying new opportunity to network is crucial to the overall success of any things and tackling challenging projects would prove to be a business, especially when things are constantly changing. huge success—and it most certainly was! We livestreamed the virtual conference on Ricoma’s Facebook page for two days back in October. Over 400 viewers were in attendance during those two days, further proving how successful this event was. Day one featured industry-leading guest speakers who joined our live stream from the comfort of their own homes. They each shared expert tips and informative presentations that covered a broad range of business and custom apparel topics. The second day featured live machine and product demonstrations along with Q&A sessions led by Ricoma experts, allowing viewers to ask questions and have them answered in real-time. 3

Dongguan Sewing Equipment Exhibition Ricoma attends first trade show post Covid-19 shutdowns From October 10th through the 12th, Ricoma participated in the Dongguan Sewing Equipment Exhibition in China. Ricoma's extensive display, which featured all our products, was filled with customers who were interested in learning about Ricoma's technology. Showing off our machines by creating colorful and intricate designs, Ricoma’s booth drew in many visitors. We were excited to see the crowd and how eager attendees were to view our embroidery and heat transfer equipment. This was one of the first trade shows since the global pandemic began, and we're happy to report that it was a great success. After a long period of not being able to connect with potential customers in such a capacity, the Ricoma team is looking forward to attending more shows throughout the rest of the year and plenty more in 2021. Distributor Portal Updates MT-8S series quick start guide added to distributor portal The quick start guide for the MT 20 needle series machine is now available within your distributor portal. This valuable resource includes help with threading, tension, machine maintenance, panel information and troubleshooting instructions. With this guide, you and your customers will have a clearer, more concise understanding of how to operate the MT 20 needle series machine. You can also find quick start guides of other models such as the SWD series on the portal as well. If you haven't accessed the distributor portal yet, you can do so now by clicking here. 4

Featuring Ricoma! Discover where Ricoma’s content has recently been featured Want more from Ricoma? In addition to our blog And finally, if you are looking for a bit of light reading, and YouTube shows, you can also find us in other Graphics Pro featured our blog, The Do’s and Don'ts of prominent industry podcasts and publications. Digitizing, where we discuss the most important tips to Read on to discover where Ricoma has been featured lately. master digitizing. Check it out here: https://graphics-pro. If you’re looking to embroider on the mesh side of a cap, com/education/the-big-dos-donts-of-digitizing/ you can watch our tutorial on the Graphics Pro website here: https://graphics-pro.com/education/how-to- embroider-mesh-caps/ Stay up to date on all of Ricoma’s featured content by following us on social media! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at @RicomaHQ. An episode of our brand-new YouTube series, Print Pros, was also featured on their site. In this video, we explain the most important design factors in order to create high- quality prints on a direct-to-garment printer. Watch it here: https://graphics-pro.com/education/3-must-know-tips-for- printing-dtg-files/ 5

6 Resources That Will Make You Explore our comprehensive list of embroidery resources, guides and videos We’ve always believed that the best crafters and 3. DIY Patches | Bulk patch embroidery tutorial smartest business owners all had one thing 2. Apparel Academy in common: the willingness to invest in their education. If spreadsheets, pricing and email marketing aren’t in your Because even if you’re already an “expert,” new tools, tips wheelhouse, you’re in luck, because each week Ricoma and technology are always emerging on a daily basis and the CEO, Henry Ma, sits down to discuss different topics related only way to remain an expert is to simply continue learning to the business side of custom apparel, from how to find from others and practicing on your machine. clients to marketing your business and increasing your And so, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of revenue and so much more. resources, guides and videos that our team at Ricoma has Click here to get caught up on the first 70 episodes of our created throughout the years to teach and educate business Apparel Academy playlist on YouTube! owners and hobbyists everything they need to know to And if binging all 70 episodes at once isn’t reasonable at the become an expert in their field! moment, then check out our 3 most popular episodes here: 1. Embroidery Hub 1. What embroiderers wish they knew before starting The first step to becoming an embroidery expert is their business mastering your craft. Whether you’re a beginner, have never touched a machine before, or just want to learn new skills 2. 5 reasons why you should start an embroidery and techniques to perfect your craft, Embroidery Hub has business you covered. From cap embroidery to in-the-hoop embroidery and even 3. The ultimate 7 step guide to starting an embroidery embroidery on toilet paper (yes, you heard that right), business our Embroidery Hub series is a place you can turn to for inspiration, expert tips and more! 4. Ricoma Facebook Live Click here to catch up on over 100 episodes of Embroidery Hub on our YouTube Playlist! And if you just want to get to the good stuff, check out 3 of our most popular episodes below: 1. 3D Embroidery | How to do puff embroidery on hats tutorial 2. Embroidering Beanies | How to embroider on knitwear tutorial 6

u an Embroidery Expert If pre-recorded, binge-worthy video content wasn’t enough, Mistakes To Avoid When Embroidering Caps guide. We Henry takes time out of his busy schedule to sit down found that most cap embroidery issues are usually caused once a month with our social media followers to answer by user-error and are easily correctable. questions they have about the business, the craft and our That’s why we created a guide to machines, live right on our Facebook page. seven mistakes you can avoid when 5. Downloadable Resources embroidering caps. Click here to download the guide. 6. Facebook groups The best part? You can watch the recordings of all our Ricoma offers Facebook groups for apparel decorators to past lives on our Facebook page right here and learn from network, connect and learn from others who are also in the questions asked by your colleagues in past sessions. custom apparel industry. Our priority at Ricoma has always been to make sure our customers and distributors have access to FREE information Our Facebook group, Embroidery and Custom Apparel that helps them succeed. This is why we’ve taken the time to Mastery, has over 200,000 members who frequently create valuable guides, charts and educational documents that we encourage aspiring and expanding business owners ask questions, post their embroidery work, and provide to download and utilize to their full potential. feedback to others. If a member wants direct access to We know that one of the trickiest parts of embroidery is Ricoma content and the opportunity to ask the Ricoma knowing exactly which combination of materials, stabilizer team members questions, they can speak directly with the page admins in this group. and needles are needed for all of the 7. Explore our blog different fabrics your customers are going to be embroidering with on their machine. If you think this article was helpful, you can visit our blog That's why we’ve put together a cheat sheet for more articles like this one with even more priceless of 50 of the most popular fabrics and how to embroider them for the best possible results for any projects. Click here to download the guide. Another coveted download is The Ultimate Thread Break Troubleshooting Guide, which helps embroiderers determine what type of thread break they’re experiencing and goes over the steps to troubleshoot the issue like a pro. You’ll also learn how to prevent thread breaks from happening in the first place. Click here to download the guide. Last but not least, make sure to download The 7 Costly 7

information about the industry. Check out our top blog What’s next? articles below on literally everything you need to know We guarantee our 6 resources above will help you become about embroidery, custom apparel and running a busines. an embroidery expert in no time. But if you’re still not Getting started with embroidery convinced and/or craving more information, subscribe to our newsletter to receive weekly emails with brand-new • 5 reasons why embroidery is the perfect side content and resources like the ones above every week. business • 7 critical things to do before starting an embroidery business • 5 industry fundamentals you must know before launching a custom apparel business Choosing a machine • Why Ricoma has the best (and most cost effective) embroidery machine on the market • Commercial embroidery machine comparison: Tajima, SWF, Happy and Ricoma • A comparison of all Ricoma models Business Tips • 5 efficiency tips for embroidery businesses • Top 10 embroidery business costs + ways to reduce them • 7 tips to increase productivity while working from home TikTok Success! Ricoma grows TikTok following If you didn’t already know, Ricoma joined TikTok in 2020 #OddlySatisfying: When you enjoy watching your project as one of our many initiatives to grow our social media come to life. presence. Since the start of our TikTok journey, we #JustDoIt: When the embroidery machine is just too have gained hundreds of followers and have had a fun time enticing. coming up with entertaining ways to make custom apparel #GoodVibes: When you love what you do. relevant and trendy. With a talented cast of actors recruited from Ricoma’s marketing team, our TikTok account is full of hilarious embroidery-related skits, jokes and more. With over 3,000 likes across our TikToks, we have geared up to continue creating inventive content on a weekly basis. Check out some of our most popular TikToks to date below! #RoomatesForLife: When your college roommate is an embroiderer. 8

Ultimate Cap Embroidery Challenge Ricoma challenges the MT-1502 against two MT-1501s in an embroidery face-off In November, we hosted our first-ever embroidery In the end, there could only be one winner. The MT-1502 competition for a special edition of our Embroidery Hub two-head machine came out on top, and Willy claimed the series on YouTube. In this challenge, Embroidery Hub prize by completing only two perfectly-embroidered caps host, Willy, and Ricoma’s Onboarding Specialist, Julia, went more than Julia. This proved that when it comes to bulk cap head-to-head to finally answer one of the most commonly- production, these two machine configurations are pretty asked questions: Are two single-head machines faster than evenly matched. The key takeaway from this challenge is one two-head machine? that choosing the right machine depends on a person’s preferences and their long-term business goals. In this nail-biting competition, which you can watch right That said, this action-packed two-part challenge will allow here, two of our most experienced embroiderers had one you to witness first-hand the differences between using hour to embroider as many production-ready caps as two single-head machines and one two-head machine. In possible. The twist? Willy was assigned to work on an MT addition, you’ll hear from the contestants as they recount two-head machine, while Julia was assigned two MT single- what it was like to go head-to-head in this ultimate cap head machines. The other twist? They each only had one cap embroidery challenge. Watch how it all unfolded minute by ring per head to work with! minute in our two-part episode right here. When the hour was up, our contestants presented their 9 completed caps to the judge of the competition, Henry Ma. Henry inspected each cap for quality and chose a winner based on the number of production-ready caps our contestants managed to complete.

YOUTUBE ROUND UP Check out Ricoma’s best videos of 2020 2020 was a momentous year for Ricoma’s YouTube channel! Patch Embroidery from Start to Finish—This popular We were able to create many new episodes on a broad range episode goes over every step when embroidering patches, of embroidery topics and livestream our monthly Q&As including digitizing, embroidering and cleaning the final simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube. Thanks to all the product. new content we have published over these last few months, If you are looking for more, we've got some honorable our YouTube presence has become a pillar in our company's mentions! Here are some of our favorite videos from 2020! success. Cap Embroidery Challenge—Our Ricoma embroidery As Ricoma’s channel surpassed the 50,000-subscriber masters Willy and Julia go head-to-head to find out who milestone last year, let’s look back on the successful videos can embroider the most caps in one hour in this two-part of 2020 that have contributed to this growth. challenge. To complete this challenge, Willy uses the MT- Apparel Academy 1502 multi-head machine and Julia uses two MT-1501 single-head machines. FACT or FICTION? EM-1010 Cap Embroidery—Henry answers a frequently-asked question about the Ricoma EM- 1010 embroidery machine and its ability to embroider caps. Embroidery Hub Richardson Cap 3D Puff Challenge—Willy goes in depth on the best way to embroider 3D puff on these structured caps. This highly-requested video shows you how to embroider these challenging caps at 1000 spm! Embroider a Reusable Face Mask with Filter—When the demand for facemasks sky rocketed this past spring, Willy taught our viewers how to create a face mask with just their embroidery machine. 10

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT Check out Ricoma’s Sales Manager, Jason Bartolotta Meet Ricoma’s Sales Manager, Jason Bartolotta, and learn and as one cohesive team is the most difficult. all about his challenging and rewarding role at Ricoma How do you motivate your team to meet goals and keep up International. with demand? We have large goals to achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly How long have you been with Ricoma and can you basis to ensure we hit our yearly targets. I will always give summarize your role at the company? daily goals to achieve and try to not overwhelm reps with I have been with Ricoma for 1.5 years. Currently, I am the US tremendous numbers. I have noticed over the years that giving Sales Manager, which entails leading 28 representatives on the goals the team can digest daily works best. If we continue to US sales team, LATAM/Canada and Account Coordinators accomplish our daily goals, then our weekly, monthly and in a highly transactional environment. This is a complex role yearly goals take care of themselves. Once we accomplish our since I manage many personalities and both team-based and daily goal, the whole team receives praise for their cohesive individual sales quotas. On a daily basis, I manage workflows efforts. I also motivate my teams by doing everything they have and targets as well as recruit, motivate and train salespeople. to do beside them on a daily basis. I believe to gain the respect I also manage the operation process, customer negotiations, of any team you manage; you have to walk the walk and back it financing strategies and handle any customer complaints up. My team knows I will jump right in the trenches and fight or employee issues that may arise. My goal is to elevate with them, so once you gain the ultimate respect of your team salesmanship, streamline sales processes, and train reps under the sky is the limit. my leadership in order to see concrete improvements. What would be your advice to distributors around the world In your opinion, what is the most challenging part about who are currently selling Ricoma products? running a sales department? I would say, first and foremost, they must immerse themselves In my opinion, one of the most difficult challenges is getting in the Ricoma brand and understand what our mission is. the whole team to run efficiently and hit goals as a cohesive We help our customers start a business from the comfort of unit. When managing a team, you come across many different their homes or business and offer all the necessary tools to be personalities and need to instill your way of thinking, successful. They need to get fully versed and educated on our approach, effort and salesmanship across the team. Sales products and services in order to be successful. If you do not training of individual reps will ensure they get better on an understand what you are selling, you will not be able to sell or individual basis, but ensuring the whole team gets to my relay that information to the potential customer effectively. desired weekly, monthly and yearly goal is challenging. To have How has working at Ricoma influenced your career? the whole team perform at my desired level on a daily basis I have been around the garment decoration/manufacturing industry my whole life; it’s been a family business tradition for three generations. I’m lucky to have a successful sales and management career within an industry I have been privy to since early on. Ricoma is a forward thinking, highly organized, technology-heavy corporation that has taught me a tremendous amount about how to utilize popular, high-level platforms to increase revenues on a consistent basis. Being part of marketing initiatives and incorporating these goals with our sales team has taught me many lessons on how to be a metric driven manager who utilizes marketing information for the betterment of my team and the company. Ricoma has brought many opportunities, taught me many lessons and has helped me grow as a Sales Manager. 11

DISTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT Meet Hemanth Krishna from Krishna Sewing Solutions Krishna Sewing Solutions, Ricoma’s distributor in What made you want to sell Ricoma products? India, did very well in 2020, so we were excited to sit I have worked with many companies and have seen many down with them to learn more about their company products, and compared to other brands, Ricoma has an and their overall experience working with Ricoma! Read on excellent collection of products to choose from all of which to hear from the company’s founder, Hemanth Krishna. are of the highest quality. Not to mention, Ricoma has a great support team, so I decided to sell their products. What Ricoma product sells the most in your company? While we do sell all Ricoma embroidery machine models, we do find that in our Indian market, our customers are consistently looking for the largest embroidery area available to create Sarees, Lehengas and blouses. Because of this, our best seller is the Ricoma SWD. What is your company’s goal for 2021? Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we couldn’t open our new office in Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai as we had planned last year. So, for the upcoming year, 2021, we are eager to continue growing and opening our new branches so that we can continue to sell more incredible Ricoma embroidery machines! Tell us about your company? I started Krishna Sewing Solutions with my family as a sewing machine company in 2012. Now, the majority of our business comes from selling embroidery machines and embroidery software. We currently have six locations all over India and sell all kinds of sewing and embroidery equipment and accessories. How long have you been a distributor for Ricoma? I have been a distributor for Ricoma for the past 3 to 4 years. Before branching into embroidery, I spent a lot of time finding the products I wanted to sell. It was quite a hard process and it took me several months before I found products I trusted and decided to work with Ricoma. 12

Upcoming events To see our machines live at one of our upcoming events, come see us at the following dates below. Due to COVID-19 some event dates have changed. ISS long beach decosummit Long Beach, California, USA Miami, Florida, USA January 22-24, 2021 March 25-27, 2021 ISS Atlantic city ISS Orlando Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA Orlando, Florida, USA March 25-27, 2021 April 8-10, 2021 ISS baton rouge ISS fort worth Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA Fort Worth, Texas, USA June 24-26, 2021 September 10-12, 2021 13

4th QUARTER • 2020 EDITION ABOUT THE AUTHOR Aliana Zamorano is one of the content specialists at Ricoma. An avid reader and writer her whole life, Aliana graduated from Florida International University with a bachelor’s degree in communications and fulfills her passion by creating content for Ricoma’s blogs and social media! When she’s not at Ricoma, you can find Aliana spending time with her friends and family. If you’d like to chat about embroidery or would like more information about the articles in this publication, contact Aliana at [email protected]. ABOUt THE EDITOR Jesse Botella is the content manager at Ricoma. A wordsmith and storyteller, Jesse has been copywriting and editing content for nearly a decade. His passion for content marketing has lead him to Ricoma, where he works with the creative team to deliver fresh, new content on a daily basis. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and a master’s degree from Barry University. When he’s not working on content for Ricoma, you can find him relaxing at home with his family, which includes his cat, two dogs, two geckos and pet rat. If you’d like to chat with Jesse about Ricoma’s content, you can reach him via email at [email protected]. helpful links Join Group WATCH Embroidery & Custom Apparel Mastery Facebook Group Join our Facebook community to connect with other embroiderers, ask questions ricoma.COM and share knowledge. WATCH Embroidery Hub YouTube Series Scroll through this playlist to see our how-to videos such as best practices for embroidery on knitwear, 3D puff embroidery and more. Ricoma Blog Visit our blog for more machine embroidery insights. Apparel Academy YouTube Series Watch Henry Ma, CEO of Ricoma, give embroidery and custom apparel businesses the advice they need to start and grow their businesses. 14