AGC Education: Printing Solutions that Maximize Classroom Success

Annette Scothon, Co-President & Owner and Chuck Scothon, Co-President & Owner

AGC Education has been a leading technology solutions provider for over three decades, providing schools with customizable options designed for every customer.

“Our mission is simple…… improve school environments, make teacher’s lives easier, and create customers for life,” says Annette Scothon, Owner of AGC Education.

The following conversation with Chuck and Annette sheds some light on their unique solutions in the EdTech landscape.

What is the background of your company? What kind of value proposition are you delivering in the EdTech landscape?

Chuck: AGC Education is a 30-year-old company. We are national in scope with over 1500 customers in all 50 states and a returning customer rate of over 90%. We are focused on a variety of solutions that can transform the school environment, and all of them have a common purpose—they make teachers’ and administrators’ lives easier by combining technology, content, and training for flawless implementation.

Our most adopted offering is the Educator-Plus, a solution that can truly transform an entire school through classroom visuals, banners, posters, window decals, and more. With exclusive content that can be customized by any user, the Educator-Plus allows for any window, wall or outdoor surface to be transformed into a place for communication and inspiration within minutes.

Our second offering is a software package called Stemvelope, which provides a complete solution for teachers to enhance their STEM lessons for grades K-6. Designed to work with the Educator-Plus, this solution creates individualized or group learning packages for less than $5/student while also eliminating the challenges of storage, one dimensional STEM tools, and one size fits all approaches that we see in the STEM marketplace.

Our newest solution is Imagin3D, a 3D printing solution that is unparalled in the market. Leveraging our exclusive STEM3D Teachers 3D Resource Kit, the Imagin3D system can be easily used in all subjects from English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Gym and even Home Economics. Packaged with lesson starters, classroom handouts, classroom visuals, and thousands of editable 3D models, this turnkey package separates this 3D printing solution from any on the market, we guarantee it.

What are the pain points or specific challenges that your clients are facing? How do you help your clients mitigate those challenges?

Annette: The biggest thing we find is that too many schools are dependent exclusively on the district IT department, who can be great partners but are often stretched too thin to deal with classroom and school level technology needs. We have found schools that have 6-8 Smart Boards sitting in boxes because while needed the set up and implementation is too complex. That is why we designed the Educator-Plus, the Imagin3D, STEM3D and the Stemvelope for simple, fast school level implementation.

Our mission is simple…… improve school environments, make teacher’s lives easier, and create customers for life

Each of our partner schools are enrolled in our Implementation Success Program, a program that starts with an evaluation of the school’s specific needs. We evaluate what products best fit the schools and we customize our training and the on-going support program to meet their individual needs. Beyond training and set up, however, we pride ourselves on sharing the best experiences and ideas from our 1500 partner schools and 3000 educators to help get results. This is the true meaning of implementation and why AGC prides itself on our support programs.

Chuck: The Imagin3D offering came from the very simple but complex issue that 3D printing is in demand by parents, by districts and by students but while many companies will sell you a machine, they are not vested in the implementation and successful use. Too many schools were telling us that no one was helping teachers use the 3D printer in the classroom and it was this simple but important issue that made us realize we could solve that challenge.

How do your products work? How do they benefit the clients?

Chuck: Our focus is on helping schools truly understand the impact the Educator-Plus or the Imagin3D can have on every student, classroom, and school. We can certainly educate schools on the technology, but we know it is what a school can do with the equipment that demonstrates the true value these can have. We often say that the only limitation to our solutions is the client’s imagination.

We have had high schools celebrate the graduating class by showcasing the universities that the seniors will soon be attending. We have had middle schools create a fine arts hallway by printing classic masterpieces. We have had schools print their own outdoor sponsorship banners, generating thousands of dollars in revenue. And we have had schools create a “print shop”, complete with a P&L, orders, inventory, etc for both students and their district, to help students truly understand how to run a business. Again, our solutions are only limited by the imaginations of our partner schools.

What is your approach to understanding your clients? What is the process that you undertake?

Annette: We start with a very simple rule, we listen. Listening gives us the insights as to what solutions might fit best and how it can be customized for every school.

Chuck: Another factor that is unique to AGC and helps us to understand the needs of our clients is our Implementation Success Team. This team’s complete focus is insuring that schools know their equipment, that it’s operational, and that their team members can get any question answered, usually within minutes and 99% within 24 hours. It is this constant and relentless focus on Customer Success that helps us learn quickly and anticipate challenges that other schools may be facing.

Please share a customer success story with us.

Chuck: One of the schools that we work with was looking to create a stem lab for their K-6 grade school. Traditional companies were quoting up to $50,000. Using a combined package from AGC Education of both the Educator-Plus and the Stemvelope content software, the school was able to completely transform the old library into a visually stimulating learning environment and implement an entire stem lab for under $10,000 and in less than three months. To put this in perspective, the school saved over 80% in costs, cut their set up time by 50% and gave every teacher the ability to create STEM projects for under $5/student/activity. As the Principal and Asst. Principal have both shared with us, “We could not have done anything close to this without the help, inspiration, and team at AGC”.

What does the future hold for AGC Education?

Annette: We believe that the future is tremendously bright. The response to our expanded products has been phenomenal, our ongoing customers are adopting our new solutions at a record rate, and people are starting to truly appreciate and recognize that our investment in their success shows that we are here for the next 20 years and not just for the day of the sale.