Nasavo Blog

It’s a fact that well made promotional merchandise, promotional clothing or any really eye-catching and practical corporate products will work very well in helping you advertise your organisation. However This article puts forward the proposition that corporate clothing will always be the better choice. The reason for taking this stance is because when your clients wear your branded T-shirts or embroidered polo shirts your logo or advertising message is taken out of the office and into the wider world. As a result you can gain a much bigger exposure than you would with more run of the mill office based promotional items for example leather conference folders or perhaps even promotional bottled water.

The range of promotional clothing available in the market is vast. Prices range from below a £1 for printed T-shirts and on up to as much as £50 for exquisite embroidered polo shirts from well known brands such as Titleist or Ashworth. Promotional Jackets start off from as little as £5.50 for a light variety and go all the way up to £125 plus for technical fabrics. The following list of products provides you with what the most popular items of corporate clothing are in the market today make your own decision between those and business gifts.

Promotional T-shirts
There’s one undeniable fact in the world of corporate clothing and it is this, screen printed T-shirts are and always will be the biggest selling item. As corporate merchandise they out-sell branded polo shirts by more than 100 to 1 and you might be surprised to learn they also out-sell any sorts of promotional hats, even baseball caps. They will also stick around much longer than alternative promotional goods as pens or keyrings.

Promotional Jackets
In the past we would have included promotional fleeces in the this section however they are so popular now that they deserve one of their own. Embroidered or printed promotional jackets now account for a large chunk of the corporate promotional clothing business. The ability to incorporate alternative promotional products such as branded zip pulls means that you get your logo on these great promotional items not just once but twice.

Promotional Polo Shirts
If you are looking for a lot corporate clothing that has a high perceived value and will be well received by your customers then always go for embroidered polo shirts. They not only appear and feel good but when compared to branded T-shirts they are in a class of their own. The comparison in the corporate gifts world would be the difference between leather conference folders and perhaps PVC folders.

Promotional Fleeces
The largest growth in the promotional clothing UK market over the past 10 years has been in embroidered fleeces. When comparing what you can get in the way of corporate promotional goods for the the same money then they appear extremely cost effective.

So what’s it to be, company merchandise or corporate clothing? The choice is entirely yours, I know where my loyalty lies and it’s not with the promotional products. OK I can see the benefits of promotional bottled water or even the leather conference folders but there is one irrefutable fact that you ought to consider with promotional products. Once the conference or event is over the water will have been drunk or thrown away and the folders or whatever other corporate products you handed out will be stuffed into a filing cabinet or discarded in the boot of the car and neglected. On the other hand compare that to the different types of corporate clothing that people rarley throw away such as embroidered baseball caps or promotional polo shirts? This makes the pay per view value of corporate clothing much more cost effective than that of promotional products and that’s after all exactly what we should be looking to achieve, value for money.

The safety testing of promotional merchandise has become a massive subject over the past couple of decades. In this article we look at the various sorts of testing and offer 5 tips on how to make sure your Promotional Products will pass all the necessary requirements for their intended market.

1.Get to know your local testing laboratory

Getting to know your local product safety testing laboratory is an important step in the whole process. Even if your local lab does not have a lot of experience in testing promotional merchandise there are manuals and procedures that are used globally to ensure consistency in testing. Once they have performed tests on a few promotional items for you they will get to know how you work, what requirements the industry needs and things become much easier.

2. Investigate which specific tests will be needed for each product.

Different tests for all types of Promotional Gifts are required and a lot depends upon where they will end up going. A good example might be promotional bottled water or even leather conference folders. It’s not just the water that would need testing for any impurities, the bottle would need to be checked to make sure it is safe from any dangerous substances. And you may be surprised to learn that the label would be checked as well.

3. Discover as much as you can about all the entire testing process

It is much better to try and iron out any potential design problems in a new product whilst it is on the drawing board. A knowledge of what tests may be required will save you lots of time and money later. If you were to consider making a new electrical device such as an MP3 Player or even a new sort of flash drive. These would have to have entirely different tests compared to the first two examples above. Another sector entirely like promotional clothing would have different tests again. Take promotional jackets, embroidered polo shirts or even printed T-shirts, in fact any sort of corporate clothing, all these items would be subjected to tests to make sure the colour dyes did not run.

4. Learn about product labelling

Product labelling is another area that is really important when it comes to safety testing. You must ensure that all the Promotional Items you give away has been correctly identified for the target audience. There are labels for every promotional product that you can think of and if they can’t go onto the actual item itself, say in the case of a small promotional keyring, then they go on to the plastic bag that it is supplied in.

5. Go on specific training courses

You cannot take any chances with product safety testing. Look up the subject on Google and find a local course that can at least teach you the basics of the subject. Some trade associations run such courses or your local trade & commerce organisation should be able to point you in the right direction. Failing that talk to other traders in the same field as you at exhibitions or conferences. It’s in everybody’s interest to maintain good standards in their respective industries.

Purchasing Promotional Gifts is no different to buying any other product and it does’nt matter whether you are purchasing promotional bottled water or leather conference folders. Who you buy it from is the key to a profitable purchase. In the old days you might walk down your local high street and buy almost all your requirements in individual shops, your shoes came from the shoemaker your nails came from the ironmonger and your fish came from the fishmonger. Purchasing promotional gifts was exactly the same back then. If you were producing an event or holding an exhibition and needed a certain amount of promotional clothing you went along to a specialist supplier who was able to show you a good range. After that if you needed business gifts to hand out you contacted the promotional pen dealer and acquired your pens, or your promotional mugs dealer and so on. However these days things are no longer the same..

A few organizations such as those selling corporate clothing still tend to be quite specialised however the majority of the other single product category suppliers have consolidated. As with supermarkets such as Wal Mart or Sainsburys you can now go to a one stop shop for almost all your Promotional Merchandise. Whilst a lot individuals still choose to stick with the past it really no longer makes for good business.

The biggest buyers of promotional goods tend to be the huge corporations and they have a different agenda to the little businessman who wants a small supply of promotional merchandise for a particular event. The big players will be looking at cost advantages in terms of the promotional gifts they purchase and also in terms of time. They don’t want their personnel needing to work with up to half a dozen minor business gift houses for just one event, it simply takes too long. They will be also conscious that they need to be careful about the safety testing of their branded products. And they have to be confident that the goods were ethically sourced.

The problem with companies that deal in individual commodity promotional products is that they don’t have the size or clout to be able to offer you many of these prerequisites. Unless for example we take the case of Parker Pens or Mont Blanc. Both these companies are huge and have plenty of resources in terms of staff and finance to handle all the above points. However take a small seller of promotional products they may well be able to supply branded T-shirts or embroidered polo shirts on the other hand they have in all probability never heard of ethical trading or service level agreements.

The bottom line has to be that whilst modest one man bands supplying a range of Promotional Items such as the leather conference folders, branded T-shirts, embroidered polo shirts or leather conference folders are nice in an old fashioned sense they basically can’t offer the same levels of service as the major boys. Ask oneself this question, when you next need to buy your groceries will you head to a supermarket where you know you will get a superb variety at low cost? Or will you go to your local high street where you can’t park, you have to wait to be served in every shop and pay more for a far smaller variety of goods. I rest my case.

Many major companies now prefer to put out tenders for a single supplier for their Promotional Items rather than use a number of different business gift suppliers. The reasons for doing this are many and a well run tender for the supply of promotional items can save a company a great deal of expense over the course of a year.

Controlling the supply of promotional items is a good reason for using the tender process because once it is in place you determine who buys what products from whom at at how much. It also means that you can agree terms in relation to service level agreements rebates etc.

Any corporation who allows the procurement of goods such as leather conference folders or promotional bttled water is wasting a lot of money. The reason is that untrained an unskilled buyers tend to keep going back to an original supplier and never look at alternative cheaper sources of supply. These suppliers may even send in a few inexpensive gifts to the buyers every year in an effort to persuade them to stay with them. These free promotional gifts are often sponsored by the manufacturers and given to the distributors free so there is nothing illegal in people accepting them as long as it is not against company policy.

In the case of promotional clothing such as Printed T-shirts or embroidered polo shirts for example you could have as many as 20 people in large organisations buying them. The problem is that every single one of them are probably paying repeat origination charges every time. An origination charge for embroidery could be as much as £50 and for silk screen printing £30 per colour. This means that every time each of them put in an order for these goods or any other Promotional Products with a 4 colour logo for that matter they are paying around £170, if you multiply that by twenty buyers that gives you £3,400 so if they buy say three times a year a large corporation could be spending over £10,000 on origination costs that would come free of charge form one supplier.

Promotional merchandise tenders offer the opportunity for proper service level agreements to be set up. These are usually standard conditions with any supplier who trades in a professional way. But a company setting up a single source supplier for their Promotional Products or come to that for any other sorts of products, can make more stringent demands on these service levels if it feels it necessary. Financial rebates will also usually form part of the service level agreements with money being returned based upon annual expenditure.

If you do decide to go ahead with a tender you should contact a few promotional merchandise suppliers first and ask them for details of well run tenders they have already completed. This will undoubtedly save you a great deal of time further along in the process as a poorly constructed tender wastes a good deal of time for both the company setting the tender up and the suppliers who are tendering for the business. Experience in running full promotional merchandise programmes is essential so make sure you choose a company that can demonstrate lots of expertise in that area.

Getting your name out on the street can be expensive but giving away promotional bags is a great way to succeed without it costing you a fortune. Everywhere you go you cannot avoid tehm, almost everyone carries a bag of sorts and each one of them is usually branded with a company logo. As long as you target the right promotional bag to the right customer you can be assured that they will do your advertising for you. These 4 examples prove that using these Promotional Gifts is a very cost effective method of advertising.

1 Promotional Backpacks

A long time ago these great Promotional Merchandise products were used almost exclusively by mountain climbers but for the past 25 years they have come well into the mainstream of the promotional bag market. Most of the sporting brands like Nike, Slazenger, Adidas etc have produced their own branded ranges of bags which can vary in price from a couple of pounds upwards. Every year new ideas and features are added and these include bottle holders made from a net fabric, Velcro closers, zip tags, laptop protectors and many more. If you are purchasing your promotional bags at source from a manufacturer this will enable you to have much more control over the branding of the product. The small pocket panels, straps and zip closers can be completely personalised and then assembled into the bag. Once they are in place they cannot be branded as printers or embroiderers are unable to get them into their machines.

2 Promotional Laptop Bags

If the promotional bags market was looking for a new product to help boost sales then the laptop computer was just the thing. When you consider that these bags did not exist 20 years ago it is amazing that you can’t walk down the street without seeing lots of them wherever you are. Available in simple slim styles that don’t even have a handle or vastly complex styles that include pockets, zips, protectors, security straps etc there is a truly amazing range to choose from. Many laptop manufacturers such as Dell, Hitachi and Panasonic giveaway laptop bags with their more expensive models. It’s a great way to get their brand exposed and secures brand loyalty with the owner.

3 Promotional Sports Bags

Now even your sweaty trainers can have their own compartment and be kept separate from the rest of your sportswear. There have been lots of great developments in the promotional sports bag market and manufacturers such as Adidas, Nike and Slazenger have realised that this is a great way to get their brand out onto the street, especially with the youth market. Golf manufacturers have also caught on the trend with Callaway and Dunlop leading the way. Their Golf Shoe bags make great Business Gifts as they are particularly well designed with individual compartments for your golf balls, shoes and Tees. Specialist equipment bags for tennis and squash racquets, skis and skates etc will always be very popular as they often contain specialist pockets for balls or tools associated with the sport

4 Promotional Travel Bags

This is a vast market with some of the top of the range styles costing literally thousands of pounds for individual bags. The more common travel bags would be the small travel bag with wheels that you see in their thousands at airports or stations. The very best of these bags are manufactured from very strong but light metals and fabrics in order to comply with the onerous excess baggage charges made by airlines these days. Branding of these products can be achieved with the addition of a leather luggage tag or metal name bars stuck to the sides, large promotional prints on the side of such items look over the top and cheapen the products.

When autumn turns to winter it’s a great time to start thinking about producing some promotional Clothing for your clients. The vast majority of people start to get a little low as winter draws in unless of course they are snowboarders or skiers. People start to dust down their winter wardrobe and thoughts of winter warming clothes rise to the surface. What better time then to give away a promotional item that is perfectly timed, very apt and a money saver as well.

It’s hard to compete with all the other brands out there in the market so if you can steal an edge on your competitors then great. Giving away promotional Clothing early on in the season is one way you can do it. People are creatures of habit, especially men who tend to worry less about the fashions of the day. Give a guy a good quality promotional baseball cap or a promotional Beanie hat and he’ll probably use it all winter because it’s easily to hand or stuck in his jacket pocket from the last trip out.

If you look at the view per pound ratio on a promotional jacket it’s fantastic. Just by your client walking down the high street wearing your logo you are getting superb exposure, especially if you have a local business. Any type of promotional headwear is a great billboard, when did you last walk past an interesting cap or hat and not read it?

Hats and gloves sets are also great promotional gifts, as long as they are reasonable quality the recipient will never throw them away. With the new developments in digital printing and embroidery it is no longer a chore to personalise sets such as these with the owners initials. A personalised items is said to be retained 5 times longer than plain ones.

Promotional Fleeces have really improved since they first hit the promotional merchandise market. No longer do you have to chose between a poor quality nylon or pvc . There is a vast range of fabrics such as leather, breathable PVV, Polyester cotton mixes, micro fabrics and many more. There are promotional clothes specifically designed for the female market, the simple reshaping of this excellent business gift has breathed new life into it. If you have the time then a bespoke garment enables you to have insert colour sleeves, personalised zip tags, mobile phone pockets and may other accessories. Try to plan early and give your promotional merchandise supplier the opportunity to have them made in the Far East where they can save you a great deal of money.

Whatever you decide to do you should always buy the best quality promotional clothing that you can afford. It is better to give away half as many good quality well made garments then lots of cheap and nasty ones. It is a proven fact that a good quality piece of clothing or headwear will create much better goodwill then a cheap one, you are promoting your brand with what you give away so make sure it reflects your values or it’s a pointless exercise.