With over 20 years experience in the promotional products, swag, business; we’ve seen about everything we think. Then again we get proven wrong many times.
However, there are some helpful tips we can pass along to you which will hopefully benefit you when purchasing swag.
These are not in order of importance, just random:
1. Don’t buy just what you like. Buy what your recipients like. We see this too often. Unless the people to whom you are giving the item are exactly like you, this is not a good criteria to use to buy swag. Think about who your customers are, their work atmosphere or lifestyles, and use that to help decide.
2. Stop doing rush orders. Although all the major suppliers now offer rush services, there are drawbacks to waiting too long. You may not get the item you want if there is no inventory. You will not typically get to see a proof which can lead to misprints. You will sometimes pay rush fees. If anything goes wrong with shipping you may miss your in-hands date. It just leaves too much room for errors. Standard production times are typically 10-15 business days.
3. Don’t go too cheap. The main purpose of giving swag items is so that your name and message will stay with the recipient. If it is a cheap item it is more likely to be thrown away and defeat your purpose.
4. Match your swag to your audience. This is similar to point 1 above. Be sure what you are purchasing is something your audience will want to use. Promo Hounds helps clients with this by doing the research for them based on information about the audience provided by the client.
5. Establish brand standards and abide by them. If you work for a larger company they probably already have established brand guidelines. Smaller companies should consider doing the same. Good general rule is to have two versions of your logo. One is the color version and another for one color only. Then make sure whoever is purchasing items for your company uses the guidelines. Too many items out there with different color logos does not help your branding.
6. Let a promotional product distributor do the searching for you. I know this sounds counterintuitive to today’s culture. The problem in the swag industry is that there are so many items, and often they go by different names. For instance since Velcro is a registered trademark, the term “hook and loop closure” is more proper for swag items. You will also save a lot of time by letting someone like Promo Hounds do the research. We make it a point to stay on top of trends and have an extensive database of items.
7. Get samples. Often items are not quite as they look online. Always ask for samples (within reason…not 10 samples for a $500 order). Better you be disappointed seeing the sample then when you receive 1,000 imprinted with your logo.
8. Plan ahead and order what you need. Quantity discounts do matter. We do see from time to time clients having to reorder very soon after their initial order. If they had ordered a larger quantity to begin with they would have saved money with the higher quantity discount.
9. Not comparing apples to apples. Too often clients contact us wanting a quote say on t-shirts, without knowing exactly which t-shirt they want. When we follow-up they tell us someone else was much cheaper. After questioning them we find out the other distributor is quoting a totally different t-shirt that naturally costs less because it is not as nice.
10. Avoid obnoxious imprints. I know this may sound strange coming from a swag supplier. Sometimes a more subtle imprint is desirable though. A good example is if you are giving holiday gifts to clients. Since it is a gift and not an ad per se, perhaps a discreet imprint (such as tone on tone) would be better.
We hope you find some of these tips useful!