What You Don't Know About Buying Company Swag--But Should
THE CALL: My assistant just got off the phone with a prospect inquiring about company swag from our website. She told her about calling, emailing, and live chatting with other promotional product companies. She had been doing this for the last 4 DAYS. Why?
THE PROBLEM: The prospect said she had placed an order on line for company swag from one of our competitors, thought all was fine, and then got an email from that company 3 DAYS later saying the journals were out of stock.
Her boss wanted a specific custom journal for an upcoming event. No substitutes, it had to be that exact journal.
So, the company swag scavenger hunt -- err, google search -- was on. She shared that she had found the journal on so many other websites, she lost count. She was calling, emailing, texting and live chatting her way through the list convinced she would find a company who had them in stock. Every company eventually told her the journal was out of stock. We knew that.
(And yes, she found it on the PROMOrx website. I'd link, but it's been removed.)
What did the PROMOrx team tell her?
1. Most everyone in the promotional products space is a reseller. Very few are printing or embroidering the products at their facility.
2.There is ONE factory that supplied this journal to ALL promotional product distributors. That means, even though it's on hundreds of company swag distributor's websites, NO ONE will have it as only ONE factory stocked this particular custom journal.
NOTE: This is NOT the case with all items in the promotional product industry. Many promotional items are brought into the US from overseas by multiple suppliers in our business. If one doesn't have stock, another might. We're blessed with good recall and put on our 007 glasses when necessary!
3. The custom journals she wanted are not only out of stock, they've been discontinued. We showed her 3 alternative custom journals in the same general price range. She was surprised by that. She says no one else offered options other than 'see if there was anything else on their website' she was interested in. Really? We call it customer service here at PROMOrx!
The marketing assistant who called us is probably paid somewhere in the $ 20 - 40 per hour range depending on geographic location and size of the business she works for.
If she spent 30 hours of her time this week -- her estimate, not ours -- how much company money was WASTED (not to mention time!) because no one understood the 'lay of the land' when buying company swag? Or because the company didn't have a true promotional products partner already in place? (FYI -- the custom journal order would have totaled around $1900.00)
THE TAKEAWAY: What's your time worth? Partner with a professional promotional products company who knows the details that will save your business time, which is, of course, money. Yes. Like PROMOrx.
Blogger: Vickie MacFadden, the PROMOrx.com owner. I'm a tell it like it is Southerner who loves tech and is insatiably curious. I'm the author of the infamous 5.5 Ways to Know if Your Company Swag Sucks Vickie at PROMOrx dot com
