When developing your company’s promotional programs, it is always important to consider just how they will be implemented, who will do the implementing, and what the benefits of each of your options option would be. Of course, each organization is differently structured, has different specializations, and has a different infrastructure; but in general, it usually ends up being far better for an organization to partner with a quality promotional marketing company than to try to build it on their own. This is due to the three primary benefits that a qualified promotional marketing company can bring to the table: more competitive pricing, higher efficiencies due to optimized infrastructure, and greater flexibility.

Promotional partners use volume to leverage pricing.

More Competitive Pricing – One thing your promotional products company brings to the table right away is something critical to providing the highest value possible; volume. A high-end promotional partner will typically push hundreds of times the volume annually through its supplier when compared against an individual company. The promotional company is then able to leverage that volume to negotiate much better pricing than an outside organization could ever hope to. A good supplier will also have developed long-term relationships with worldwide sourcing partners in order to provide high quality goods at extremely competitive rates. Overseas and domestic relationships can be hard to develop, and even harder to maintain for an individual organization.

One of the reasons our organization has been so successful over the years is that we have been able to offer full scale self-supporting, or even profitable, value-added programs for far cheaper than our clients can. This is simply because our organization has both the volume and the advantage of being able to maximize our economies of scale in regards to our extra value-added services. The bottom line is, due to our highly specialized service platform, we can typically offer higher quality services for less when compared with going it alone.

Your promotional partner should have an optimized program infrastructure.

Higher Efficiencies Due to Optimized Infrastructure – Most companies are good at what they do, but then again most companies aren’t promotional products companies either. With a qualified promotional partner, you can rely on their finely-honed suite of value-added services and the infrastructure that goes along with that. From product sourcing to design, to warehousing and fulfillment, most companies simply aren’t equipped to cost-effectively build the infrastructure necessary to manage a large scale program. The complexities increase even further when you include other high-end services such as custom e-commerce, program marketing, and customer support. Chances are, to build the program from scratch and fund it; you will spend more than it is worth.

In addition to the costs of building a program, there is the cost of managing a program. A good promotional program will be able to offer dedicated in-house support staff to handle things like customer service, program accounting, and technical support for all of your programs. Your partner should also be able to offer tools that make your part easier and more efficient: specialized reports, online program management, custom program support systems, etc… The daily cost of managing and supporting your promotional program can quickly spiral out of control if you are not careful. A quality promotional marketing partner can help absorb or even eliminate those costs.

Your promotional program partners will provide more options for your programs.

Greater Flexibility – Promotional needs change over time, and your promotional programs will need to adapt as well. In other words, what works well today may need to reverse course tomorrow. Your organization will need to change with the times, and you can avoid throwing away your carefully earned investment dollars by going with a partner who has the flexibility to adapt to you needs in a cost-effective way. Chances are, if you have a promotional program need, your promotional partner has ideas and solutions ready to implement to help you reach your goals. Typically they can have these solutions ready to deploy quicker and more efficiently than by starting from scratch.

It should also be noted that the promotional product industry itself changes rapidly as well. Something that was impossible yesterday may be a simple matter today. Most organizations don’t have the time to follow new developments as they arrive. For organizations like Powertex Group, keeping current on promotional trends is not only helpful, but vital to our ability to remain competitive in our market. With a solid promotional partner, you can be sure to get feedback on new program ideas, new products, as well as new business-enhancing techniques involving promotional marketing.

It is important to consider that there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, at Powertex Group, we have several trucking companies that we service. Distribution is what they do, and they can definitely do it competitively. In these cases, Powertex Group provides a whole range of value-added services while working with these partners to utilize their pre-existing distribution channels. The most important part to remember is that your organization is unique; your solutions should be as well. That is why you need a partner who is able to maximize promotional program value while working within your specific environment.

For more information on how a quality promotional supplier can help you, please call us at: (800) 588-7111 (and talk to your sales rep), or email us at: customerservice@powertexgroup.com.

Powertex is always adjusting to our clients' needs

Connecting with our clients to learn more about their needs.

It’s no secret that the last year has brought significant changes to the promotional products industry. Many in our industry have found that it is no longer enough to simply offer competitively priced products. In order to compete, a company now HAS to offer a complete service platform to survive. They have come to understand that each client is unique, and so should be their solutions.

This is something that we’ve long understood at Powertex Group, and it is part of the reason why we have been able to remain strong despite the current economic crisis. In fact, we feel that we have gained valuable insights and been able to take advantage of the last year to position ourselves for significant continued success throughout 2010.

We asked a cross-section of our customers for help

That however, is not enough to ensure long term growth. We have to continue to drive innovation not only this year, but next year and beyond.  It is in that spirit that we recently reached out to a cross-section of our clientele to ask them their opinions on what they currently are pleased with, where we offer value, and where we can potentially raise our service level to meet our client’s needs. I would like to point out, before we go any further, that while it is impossible to conduct interviews with each an every single client on our list, we are leaving this informal customer survey open to all. If you have feedback that you feel strongly about, or you have service and platform suggestions, please call us or email our customer service desk (information at the end of this article) to give us you thoughts. We want your feedback, and would love to discuss your ideas. The whole point of this process is to be able to better provide a more comprehensive service platform for our clients.

The following interview questions were asked of our clients. We have provided summaries of the responses provided, as well as a synopsis of what it means for us.

In your opinion, what services/products that we provide offer the most value to your organization?

We were very honored to have, throughout the course of our survey process, to hear our clients mention nearly every single department at least once. From accounting to production we had someone show appreciation for just about all aspects of our business. There were, however, several things that rose above the rest: distribution and fulfillment, e-commerce, understanding of our client’s corporate environment, and our creative team.

It was good to know that many of our clients see us in very much the same light that we see ourselves. We view these things as our real separators within our industry, and in the end, there were few surprises here.

What competitor’s services/products provide better value than what is offered by Powertex? Why are they better for your organization?

There were lots of suggestions for more e-commerce and customization options

There were a lot of different suggestions, but what it boils down to is the following areas were mentioned the most: More on-demand production (pointing to direct-print competitors), Several E-Commerce features that are offered in the marketplace that we should look at (especially at the entry level), better call center (dealer relations) integrations, more creative product ideas at better prices, more name brand options, and more international marketing/distribution options.

The good thing about this list: 5 out of 6 of them have some solutions being developed, tested, or are ready to launch this year. You can bet we’ll be revisiting each of these near-term, and we are already discussing the remaining item on the list. More to come on our solutions as we get closer to wrapping them up and rolling them out.

Are there ways in which we can further save you valuable time in terms of our business relationship?

Some suggestions were for more timely, comprehensive reporting.

We didn’t get a lot of feedback on this question. What we did get broke down for the most part, in the following two suggestions:  better and more timely sales/information reporting (i.e. sales data-item breakdowns etc.), and a greater selection of sure ship items (i.e. items available within 48 hours to 10 days of order).

We are always looking to get better and more timely information to our clients, and we are currently researching create a client dashboard of sorts, where clients of all types can log in to take the pulse of their programs in real-time. As far as the sure-ship items, we just released our new ’10 catalog this week, and we will be revisiting that soon, due to its popularity.

If you could change one thing about our business relationship, what would that be?

Our clients asked us to look at better ways to turn inventories and provide even lower pricing

The most common responses to this question were; to look at working out more programs to better turn certain inventoried items, and provide even lower prices.

With regards to the inventory issues and lower prices; those are projects that are ALWAYS in progress. They both require our organization to walk the fine line between flexibility and competitiveness. We are looking into revisiting our sourcing, warehousing, and distribution methods in order to try to develop new solutions for each of these. These are at the core of what we do, and we need to be constantly pushing the envelope one these.

Do you have any ideas on how we can increase the value we provide to your organization through additional products and/or services?

Our clients asked for new international distribution options.

What our clients’ said: Better international shipping/distribution options, improvements in reporting and transparency in billing and shipping, developing a combined platform where we can combine our clients’ vendors with our own offerings (i.e. sell parts, accessories, and branded merchandise from a completely managed platforms), more options for product customization and individual item customization.

What we say: We are on it. Many of these items have already been discussed internally, and several of them are already in progress.  We are not surprised at these entries, because they have come up across many different client types. Most of these were touched on in the feedback above as well, and we see each of these four projects as being key to improving our service levels to our clients.

All in all, there weren’t too many surprises that came up within this survey process. There did result, in our conversations, a lot useful suggestions on HOW BEST to accomplish these needs for our clients. For that, we would like to extend a sincere thank you to all who participated. Your feedback is essential in helping us get better, and remaining competitive in our market. We will be providing updates on where we are with our service offerings throughout the year. There is a lot in store already, and we are looking forward to an exciting 2010.

For those who have other feedback or suggestions for any of the content in this survey, we would be glad to take our feedback as well. We need to know how what we can do to not only provide value, but what we can do to become invaluable. To submit your feedback, please call us at: (800) 588-7111 (and talk to your sales rep), or email us at: customerservice@powertexgroup.com.

Planning for event sales can be a very complex task. In this, the second entry in our two part series, we will talk about merchandising techniques and increasing your sales at events. If you missed the first article, you can read it here.
In this article, we will walk you through things you need to keep in mind when setting up your event promotion:

Proper Signage: One of the first and most important steps in ensuring successful sales and happy customers is setting up proper signage. First of all, make sure your signage is clearly visible from as many angles as possible, and can be read from a distance. Secondly, make sure that your signage is professional and attractive to the eye. Thirdly, make sure that the language is concise and makes sense. Try to eliminate any language that might be confusing to customers at check out time. Make sure that pricing and specials are clearly marked. Finally, make sure customers know and can find where to go for what. Whether it be a certain type of product, or the checkout, you want your customers to find what they want easily.

Managing traffic flow is critical to event success

Traffic Management : Be aware of the traffic flow through your area, and try to anticipate potential bottlenecks and traffic problems. The better flow of traffic you have through your event merchandising area, the more success you may have. You want people to be able to find what they want, checkout, and get out easily. Many event purchases are impulse buys, and you don’t want traffic congestion to interfere with that.

As was mentioned before, make sure the signage and P.O.P properly reflects the locations of things, and that the pedestrian traffic lanes are clearly defined. If you have some areas that you know will most likely be traffic problems, and you will have no way of alleviating the problem, put some product there. Let people stare at your product while they wait, you may just get some add on sales.

Product Merchandising: Proper product merchandising can be a major factor in determining the success of your next event sales promotion. Make sure to keep your product selection in mind, and make it easy for customers to pick up add-on sales. Place like products together, and make sure to display add-on items next to the other products. Invest in proper P.O.P to properly and attractively display your product. Product will most always sell better when attractively displayed. Lastly, don’t make people look for your product. If possible, display your product at or just below eye level, and keep it visible,

Staff Appropriately: Make sure you have the appropriate staff available, and that you have a contingency plan if one or more members becomes ill. Not having enough staff can be disastrous, leading to high customer wait times, frustration, and lost sales. Plus, events can be extremely stressful on staff.
The loss of a key employee or under staffing can result in high levels of frustration and can lead to other problems as well.

Safety and security are key at events

Conversely, overstaffing can eat into your profit margins and ruin an otherwise successful venture. Be sure to analyze your potential sales numbers and plan accordingly.

Safety and Security: A general rule of thumb when planning for a successful event: expect and plan for the unexpected. Make sure you are acquainted with proper evacuation procedures for you, your employees, and your customers. Know where the fire extinguishers are, and where to find emergency first aid if necessary.

Be sure to have at least one security person for every 500 persons in your area. Depending on what kind of event you are at, you may want a higher or lower ratio. Properly train your staff on techniques to prevent the theft of both products and cash. Many an event has been ruined due to excessive theft. Have a secure system for handling daily deposits, and have a set system of checks and balances in place to ensure that proper accountability is in place for those who are handling money.

Of course each event merchandising and sales are different at every event and location, but these are some general guidelines to follow when setting up your next live promotion. Let Powertex help you set up and plan your next event. Put our experience and vast assets to work for you. Call today at (800) 588-7111, or email us at: customerservice@powertexgroup.com or visit us at: http://www.powertexgroup.com or visit us at: http://www.powertexgroup.com.

Big crowds mean lots of planning.

Planning for event sales can be very complex and difficult. In this two part series we will go through the nuts and bolts of setting up an event, and, in part two, we will talk about merchandising techniques and increasing your sales. Part 1 (below) is a list of important things to keep in mind when planning your next event:

Know Your Demographic:

The first and most obvious step in preparing for a successful event is to know who you are going to be selling to. You want to know the number, age range, male/female ratio, buying habits, etc. Music festivals, air shows, and corporate events, for instance all draw very different crowd types.

When developing your products, keep in mind that women make 60-70% of all purchases at events (even if those purchases are for men). Also remember the kids. Children’s souvenirs are a huge part of the event market.

Plan, Plan, Plan Again:

If you are developing promotional products specifically for an event, you will want to start at least 120 days ahead. This allows you plenty of time to develop the promotional items and source them overseas if you need to. You’ll also need plenty of time to plan out the shipping logistics of your program, the merchandising, and and temporary storage you might need.

Develop Your Key Strategies:

You’ll need to set up a plan to ensure on-time product delivery. If there is a need to store product before the event, or at night during multi-day events, you’ll need to arrange that as well as product transport back and forth between the locations. From a merchandising perspective, you’ll need to ensure you have the necessary trucks, tables, tents, and the proper amount of sales personnel available.

Use the demographic information you gathered (and past sales if available), to try to determine
how much product you will need to bring. Have a plan for dealing with left over product, and make sure you have a contingency plan on how to deal with a complete rain out (for outdoor events).

Get the Location Set:

Live events pose special challenges

Before you go, it is of utmost importance that you take the time to visit and evaluate the site you will be merchandising at. You’ll need to ensure that your location will have the proper traffic flow near it, you will be able to establish the proper signage. You’ll also need to check that you have proper access to electrical outlets, a phone line if you need it, and night lighting for  evening events.

Money, Money, Money:

First you will need to determine what types of payments you will be accepting (checks, credit cards,
etc..) If you are processing credit cards on-site, your site visit should have affirmed whether you have the proper phone access.

Unfortunately, many vendors spend far too little time thinking about cash security procedures. Events tend to be very chaotic, and cash can “disappear” in a hurry. Take special care in laying out how, and who will access your registers. Plan out how you will protect your hard-earned money when you are away from the booth,and during the evenings. Also take extra steps to ensure credit card information integrity if you are collecting the numbers.

Be sure to catch next month’s email article when we discuss event merchandising and techniques that will garner more sales on site. Powertex can help you set up and plan your next event. Put our experience and vast assets to work for you at your next event. Call today at (800) 588-7111 , or email us at: customerservice@powertexgroup.com or visit us at: http://www.powertexgroup.com.