If you ever wonder if you’re paying more than you should to your promotional products supplier then you probably are.

People (this includes Distributors : ) ) are creatures of habit. We go to the same stores, the same websites, the same promotional product suppliers all without ever really thinking if what we are doing is in our best interest. We think you need to think differently.

“We think you need to think differently!”

Suppliers to the promotional product industry are notoriously prone to some bad habits, which cost you, the distributor, more money than you should pay. How do I know this? I have worked the supplier side of the promo industry for 25 years. Here’s how suppliers get you to pay more than you should.

Price Creep.

Price Creep is buying something for one price and then paying more for that product after you have committed to the order. If you pay extra for proofs, set up, color changes, art charges or any other BS, you are experiencing Price Creep.

You Pay For The Dogs.

Simply put. If you buy from a supplier that has a huge stateside warehouse with 1000’s of skus you are paying for their dogs, their buying mistakes, the promotional products no one wants. Right now, at this very minute there are MILLIONS OF FIDGET SPINNERS sitting in your suppliers warehouse that no one wants. Do you think your supplier just absorbs this loss? No, they write it off (meaning they transfer the loss) against the products that they are selling.

Overhead Bloat

Big warehouses, big printing facilities, big executive salaries and more all add up to Overhead Bloat. Every one of those supplier company retreats, executive bonus packages, car allowances etc YOU PAY FOR!

“Isn’t it time you did this differently?“

Here is what we do differently.

1. We deliver every order direct from the factory in Asia to your door. We avoid the cost of warehousing and the cost of you paying for products no one wants. We deliver in 10 days or less!
2. We get you what you want. We offer 100’s of products that we deliver each and every day PLUS we can find you just about anything you want a logo on. Small MOQ, fast delivery and low prices are commonplace with us.
3. We INCLUDE shipping and all costs in your price. When we say something costs you $1.88 each net. That’s exactly what you pay. NO FREAKIN’ EXTRA’S!

Want to know more? Call 407 403 0054 or email Emily at Promo Crunch

Below are just a few products you can get and save up to 50% or more!

Did this happen? Patent loss?

The post Stop Paying Too Much for Promotional Products appeared first on Promo Motive | Branded Merchandise Supplier.

If you want to be a really successful supplier to the promotional products industry you really need to”get into the weeds” in China. This means one has to get outside of the big super cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen etc and get into the “smaller cities” where the factories actually are.

Interesting fact. Over 65 cities in China have 1 million or more people. read more

Hangzhou.

We fly into Hangzhou from Shenzhen. It’s a 3 hour flight and starts at 6 am after a long couple of days in Shenzhen. Below us is a map and satellite image of where we were and now where we are going. Shenzhen flight to Hangzhou.

Factory Tours Hangzhou and Huzhou!

We are spending a day in Hangzhou meeting 2 factory owners who produce custom phone grips. We tour the factory as shown below

China is stunning!

Here is the very modern hotel we are sting in Hangzhou.

Hangzhou is a super modern ancient city. This is a result of the past 30 plus years of Chinese government investment into infrastructure and development.

After the visit in Hangzhou we catch the bullet train to the city of Huzhou to meet our main partner in China.

Huzhou.

Huzhou is a beautiful city, clean and modern. Yet, Huzhou has evidence recorded of humans and their primal ancestors living in that area for over 1 million years.

Huzhou is also part of the southern lakes district. It is dominated by this spectacular hotel.

It is also home to the UNSD Geo Spatial UN Programme. Read More

What you notice when visiting China is the investment by the government into infrastructure and more.

20 plus years ago when I first came here, China was a poor country. It looked poor and it had a rough, worn look about it, pretty much everywhere you looked. Yet at the same time you could see construction everywhere.Investment into infrastructure and their future

At one time 7 or 8 years ago Shanghai had an estimated 40 % of all high rise construction cranes in the city. read more

Leaving Hangzhou after bullet train from Huzhou. Next and last stop. Hong Kong.

We arrive back in Hong Kong Wednesday afternoon and head back to our hotel in Wan Chai. The not so glorious hotel, The Wharney Guang Dong.

The last 2 days leaves us and especially Emily a full 30 hours to shop in one of the world’s great shopping cities. Hong Kong.

Get Your Promotional Products Direct from the Factory and Save, BIGLY!

We travel the globe connecting factories direct to the distributor so they can save on their swag. Sound like a good idea? Read more click here!

The post Hangzhou, Huzhou and other Dr. Suess sounding cities in China. Days 6-8. appeared first on Promo Motive | Branded Merchandise Supplier.

Amidst all the turmoil and fears about the pending tariffs there are a number of fundamental issues promotional product distributors need to consider when conducting their business.

Will Tariffs cost you money?

Yes. It’s a TAX on the American business and consumer.

Will Suppliers take advantage of the Tariff’s to raise prices?

Absolutely. Don’t expect SUPPLIERS to only add the Tax/Tariff to the price. The tariff rates are confusing at best and this is an excellent time for traditional ASI Suppliers to jack up prices.

Think about it this way. If you were sitting on a bunch of inventory in your warehouse and there was a good reason to tell your clients “sorry but we have to raise prices due to tariffs” don’t you think you might just add in a few points to add to your bottom line. You bet you would.

“Expect suppliers to jack up prices and blame them on the Tariffs”

In fact, “I was speaking with a couple of distributors the other day and they said that a major T shirt supplier was issuing a new tariff price sheet that had a price range to cover the cost of the new Tariffs”. I am not sure this is true but heard it twice.

How to defeat the Tariff’s impact on your bottomline.

Weird as it may sound “go factory direct” to save money on the tariffs. How?

The traditional supplier already has the product warehoused stateside where the products are priced anywhere from 50-100% margin priced over the initial factory cost.

Now that they will add an additional 25% to cover the “cost of the Tariffs”. Don’t fall for it!

Now is the BEST time in history to order your promotional products direct from the factory!

In short, the factories in Asia are more competitive, their minimum orders are as low as possible and shipping is cheap and fast. If you have about 10 days from approval to in hands just about anything can be logo’d and delivered for less than you will pay stateside.

” If you have about 10 days from approval to in hands just about anything can be logo’d and delivered for less than you will pay stateside!”

Contact us at 407 403 0054 or email Emily for a quote.

The post Factory Direct Promotional Products appeared first on Promo Motive | Branded Merchandise Supplier.

In my opinion, I believe in the year 2020 (and going forward), sole reliance on ASI by both Suppliers and Distributors is likely bad for your business. Here are my reasons and opinions.

First, a little background info.

We are a Supplier and over the past 25 years I have been in this business on both sides, first in the 90’s as a Distributor and in the last 15 years as a Supplier. Here is my informed opinion.

Everything in ASI’s marketing offers for Suppliers is “Pay for Play”. This means that every time a Distributor does an ASI search or sees a flyer or any info from ASI, the results that a Distributor sees have all been paid to be there.

Nothing shown to Distributors is a result of a product’s popularity or uniqueness.

This means that every Distributor using or seeing the ASI search or info is fed the same “Pay for Play” results as every other Distributor.

So, if a Distributor thinks they have seen a “special” or a “unique product” that no one else has seen and forwarded that “special” to their end-user, you can be sure that your competitor Distributor may very well be sending the exact same “special” to their end-users as well.

Distributors, ask yourself this: “What distinct advantage am I offering my client/prospect if all I use is the same info as my competitor uses?”

My Opinion: The future of our business is in your ability to break the ASI-only habit and think differently.

FACT: Today’s end user has an average age of 35 years while the average ASI member is 57, this means that the end user was raised on GOOGLE search as their go-to solution while the ASI member is more steeped in the old school ASI paradigm of catalogs and supplier/distributor sanctity. If this is true, you need to think more like the end user.

Look outside of ASI as well as inside.

ASI is for profit and will let seemingly anyone in. As a Promotional Products Supplier, I opted out of ASI specifically because I was seeing Chinese factories getting ASI numbers as Suppliers and even more outrageously as Distributors!

In fact, not 1 month ago I had a conversation with ASI membership on this very matter.

As you can imagine, I get solicited by ASI to join and about a month ago I found a “Supplier/Distributor” in California selling a similar product as what we import from our factory in China for a price that was so low it had to be a Chinese factory masquerading as a US Supplier/Distributor.

Their website was very poorly done, the site being full of typical language problems that are a tell-tale sign of a Chinese-owned company. Their email was answered at night (Chinese time) and their toll free # had a Chinese accented response. Go figure.

I called ASI and said simply: “If you keep asking me to return as a Supplier member, I need reassurance that this issue will disappear. They listened and as far as I can see, did nothing. They did not call me back, the Chinese site still has an ASI number. I had to ask myself… Why would this behavior happen?

My guess is for profit, pure and simple. In the last few years – when I was an ASI Supplier member – I paid ASI well over $60,000 a year on average.

This was for membership dues, trade shows and ad placement. Ad placement or “Pay for Play”…as an example, we paid $1500 a day for half of the banner ads for a single day. So $6000 a month for 1 days a week banner display on only 50% of each of that days search result.

“So for only 4x 1-day ads a month – with only HALF the Distributor views – the cost was $6000 in total per month.”

Remember – the cost incurred by any business ultimately gets passed along to the consumer. That would be YOU!

In Closing…

I am not saying that you should stop ASI altogether or that ASI is in any way to blame for the current state of the industry, but what I am saying and trying to do is start an industry dialog that gives you (the Distributor) a better insight into all of the factors that affect your business.

I feel it is important that for Distributors to succeed in the online age, they need to get out of their comfort zone and look in places outside of ASI for innovative product options.

I firmly believe that the Distributor’s strongest hand to play is to offer their clients/end-users something different than their competitor is offering. Given the information outlined above, can you be innovative and competitive in 2020 using ASI as your ONLY source for promotional products?

Let’s talk. Call us at 407 403 0054 or email John@PromoCrunch.com.

The post Is ASI Bad for Your Business? appeared first on Promo Motive | Branded Merchandise Supplier.

POP phone grips are one of the hottest new trends in b2b marketing and promotional swag. Whether it is for a tradeshow, conference or promotional swag marketing the POP is popping up everywhere.

The idea for a Square Popsocket was first raised by online blog Tech Void where in a Jan 18 2017 review of the original and trademarked Popsocket they lamented the only shortcoming being that there should be a square collapsible phone grip.

Now there is a Square Pop Phone Grip.

Logo’s for business marketing, tradeshows and corporate branding come in 3 main shapes, Circular or round, square and rectangular. With a square logo it is often a poor match to use it on a round surface or imprint area. That’s why we now offer a square POP phone grip for your logo.

Why are phone grips so popular?

Ideas and products trend up and down and this coming year it seems these ideas are up.  

Expandable, Collapsible Pop out, Popable are just a few of the names used to best describe the pop out style phone holders so prevalent in the market place.

Promotional Product trend spotter Promo Motive announced today that their algorithm has clearly shown that “these phone stands are the next big thing in trade show swag”.

The reason for this surge is best explained in an article written about the POPSockets in an article from the INDEPENDENT from the UK. Also further explained in this article from the promotional product swag source Promo Motive. Read more.

The post Is there a Square Pop Phone Grip? appeared first on Promo Motive | Branded Merchandise Supplier.