Promotional Products

What kind of promotional products do you offer? Just about all of them. We are a member of ASI, which gives us access to a bazillion different suppliers who can get us just about any bizarre item you can imagine. We can get things for vertical markets, automotive, medical, dental, computer, and much more. We can get virtually every other little item you can dream of.

Do you make them in house? Sometimes. All of our embroidery is done in-house. 95% of our screen printing is done in-house. All of our laser engraving is done in house. Most other items we sub out to ASI suppliers.

Why shouldn't I just go to them?Well, usually you can't. ASI suppliers will typically not sell to the end user. Those that will will charge you either list price or slightly more. We will typically charge list price or slightly less and we handle all of the details for you including shipping.

Why should I use you instead of some other ASI supplier in the area?Because we said please? We're nice? We'll throw in a lollipop if you request it? Really, the only thing I can say about that many ASI distributors are nothing but salesmen. They approach the business as salesmen. Ask anyone, we aren't salesmen. We, in fact, kinda suck at salesmen type activities. We don't like salesmen type activities. What we can do is make sure that your art is prepared, that we have found you the best deal possible, and we stand behind everything we sell, whether we manufactured it or not.

What kind of art do we need? Vector preferably. If you don't know what vector is, there's a good chance you don't have it. Adobe Illustrator(.ai), Corel Draw(.cdr), and EPS(.eps) are three examples of programs/formats that are usually vector. .Jpg, .gif, .bmp, .tiff are examples of Raster or Bitmap images, which are not vector. Photoshop documents (.psd) is a weird combination. Depending on the content it might be vector, it might be bitmap or it might be both. For those of you who dabble in these programs, please keep in mind that embedding a jpg in a Corel Draw file doesn't make it a vector.

I have art in Word (or Powerpoint), which kind of art is that? Hard to say. It could be either. Send it to me and I'll tell you.

Can you create art for us? Usually we can convert your work to a vector format. Depending on complexity there may or may not be an art charge. We don't usually create art from scratch. We aren't really graphic artists. We know some though, if you want referrals.

What can we do to minimize costs of promotional products?Reduce Colors. Most products are priced based on a single color imprint. Additional colors add significantly to the per item cost and often incur additional setup charges. Many items can only be printed in single color.

Tell me about overruns. When placing a small order, like 100 pieces, you usually get exactly 100 pieces. When ordering a really large quantity like 3,000 you might get 3,000, you might get 3,097, you might get 2,949. You are expected to pay for the exact amount delivered whether it is over or under your order target. Overruns occur in large batches because quality control is done after the printing and large shops have to constantly set up presses for other jobs. As a result they print extras and if there are few or no rejects you get extras. If there are lots of rejects you end up short. There are usually caps on the number of over/underruns, usually 1%. We'll let you know if a job is subject to overrun or underrun charges.

Is it true that polar bears are invisible to infrared cameras (and what does that have to do with promotional products)? No. This myth arises from the fact that Polar Bears are so immensely well insulated that thermal readings of their coats show very little difference between the bear and the ambient temperature. However, infrared cameras don't photograph heat, they photograph light. A polar bear would be hard to detect on a THERMAL camera, but there is a difference, though slight, so it wouldn't be invisible. This has nothing whatsoever to do with promotional products. We just thought it was cool and we like polar bears. In our links section there is a link to a great organization that studies polar bears, and also to the NRDC which has a campaign going to help save the bears from the increasing threat of habitat loss.

E-mail: webquestion@convective.com