Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Louie Mendicino, one half – along with his fiancée, KC Van de Markt – of Mended Mosaic.  The small, year-old LLC is a Chicago-based maker and distributor of custom leather and other garments.  Here's a description of their dual romantic/business partnership and what they offer from their website:

Together we travel the world gathering inspiration from dreams, architecture, people, and history.  We create intricate designs while we wrap it with subtle grace.  Each piece is adorned with unique flare and finished with rustic refinement.  We love influences from the romance and passion of old spain, the debauchery of the 1920's, the edges of industrial machinery, kicking up dust in the western saloons and formality of the distinguished victorian era.  We carry a delicate balance for everyday life and the specialty of one amazing piece.

You can see some of their amazing work by going here and then clicking on "collection."  (Music plays so turn down your speakers if you don't wish to disturb others.)

I spoke with Louie for an article I'm working on for our upcoming March IDEAS newsletter on the employee engagement best practices that are unique when outsourcing much of your work abroad (in Mended Mosaic's case, in Bali).  Here are some of the insights I gleaned from our conversation:

1. Whether your partnership is all business, or business and romantic, organize the business to play to each partner's strengths.  For MM, this means that Louie designs the men's wear and handles the books, and KC designs the women's wear and is the more active networker.
2. If you must outsource, do it for the right reasons.  Louie and KC chose Bali in part because they had traveled there shortly after they first met, but mostly because sewing is not a lost art there, as Louie feels it has become in the U.S.
3. On the heels of the last point, stay true to your values.  Louie and KC spent six months in Bali last year overseeing production.  They want to spend less time there moving forward, but it's more about reducing their carbon footprint than about the travel expense.  (This is a common value among Generation Yers.)
4. Use employee engagement to make life better for your workers, and they will reward you with higher productivity and more loyalty.  As several of their workers in Bali work out of their homes, Louie and KC bought fans for them to help better oscillate the air.
5. Be strategic about social media to reach out to your target audience.  As opposed to the all-platform approach of many companies, spend your marketing resources wisely on the ones where the people you want to reach hang out most often.  For MM, this is on MySpace.
6. If you're B2B, make it easy for businesses to contract with you.  In retooling their website, MM is preparing to launch a new section, in addition to their existing retail framework, that will allow boutique clothiers to enter their tax ID number to buy direct from their site.
7. Be wary of growing too big, too fast.  Louie says he has a target number of wholesale relationships in mind for the long haul so that, given his limited staff, MM can stay true to another core company value (see #3 above) and not sacrifice quality over quantity.

To read my interview with Louie when it comes out next week, subscribe to Winning Workplaces IDEAS.  It's free.

If you have a global workforce, how much do these insights ring true for you?  And how do you maintain good communication that ensures strong team building in your culture?