Looking for a padfolio that is a little different? The Windsor Reflections Steno-Folio opens steno style from bottom to top. It has a glossy vinyl finish and a zippered construction. It is trim and elegant, and would be nice for a business meeting or conference. The writing pad is 6" x 9" so don't expect to hold full size letter paper.

Technorati Profile

Two More Fun Sea Life Promotions

Here are two more fun Dolphin promotional items to follow up my last post:

This sleek Dolphin Shaped Massager:

And the Dolphin Insert Beach Ball:

Shark Attacks Cause Stress - Try a Shark Stress Toy ;)

Tonight we had a family night. After the prayer, songs and a lesson about gratitude, the kids and I watched Shark Attack! on DVD an interesting NOVA special originally aired on PBS in 1997. It is fascinating how frightening these animals are, and how the public continues to act with fear disproportionate to the actual and statistical danger that these magnificent creatures pose.

My boys love sharks, and they watched with rapt attention. My oldest son wants to be a scientist, and he really gets into shows like this. One thing that I found interesting is that the tiger shark actually poses a greater danger than the Great White shark, because they tend to be more aggressive.

I decided to quickly take a glance and see if we have any promotional items on our website related to sharks and other sea life. We did have a few. The only ones that we have are stress toy shapes. Here are the different ones that we carry:

Shark Stress Toy
Dolphin Stress Toy
Killer Whale Stress Toy
Humpback Whale Stress Reliever
Lobster Stress Toy
Octopus Stress Reliever

A shark would make a great little gift to reward aggressive sales goals met, while a whale could be a great giveaway for a record month of revenue. The lobster would make a great promotion for a seafood distributor, while the dolphin would be useful for an environmental or educational campaign.

Bedtime

I didn't get much sleep last night. My wife is pregnant and she was not feeling well. This will be a short post as I am about to pitch over of exhaustion right now and start drooling all over the keyboard.

Since I'm so tired, I thought of the perfect promotion to throw up on the blog, before crawling into bed. It's a Warm/Cold Eye Mask that would calm even the most stressed day. Good night.

Warm / Cold Promotional Eye Masks

Hacking With Friends: Why Even A Beginner Loves Golf

Golf is a great game. This is coming from someone who hasn't even played the game much. About ten years ago, I went golfing for the first time. A friend from my Church took me to a very hilly (and difficult) nine hole course and taught me the basics of the game. I only played a couple more times over the next eight years, but then this last year I went multiple times, and I even participated in a scramble. My shot is improving, and the better you become, the more you love the game.

I like golf so much, because every time I have played the game, I have played it with friends, and just the time spent jesting, and talking and teasing is the stuff good friendships are made of. For the same reasons golf is good for friends, it is good for business. It builds relationships, yet most of the competitions is really against yourself. Businesses are built best on this mentality, where colleagues are working to deliver their personal best, and their lives are being enhanced by relationships.

Here are some great golf promotional products and golf accessories to give to your co-players out on the links.

And here are two of my favorites:

1. Stainless Steel Folding Zippo Golf Tool
2. Golf Clik Clak Mints

After moving from Utah to Oregon, I became acutely aware of the practical nature of the umbrellas as a corporate promotional product. I've always thought umbrellas were cool devices. I loved how a push button umbrella extends and shoots out almost like a weapon and then quickly expands open.

When I was a boy, I would pretend that an umbrella was a weapon. It was both a sword and a shield. I guess the mechanism of the umbrella is a simple fascination with me.

A promotional umbrella can be decorated in multiple ways. The most common is a screen print on a single or multiple panels. Because an umbrella has multiple panels, a cool application is to put a different message on each panel or on every other panel. I have seen embroidery on an umbrella. I used to have a nice Ritz Carlton umbrella with gold metallic embroidery, but I don't think I would recommend it as a rule, because the nylon fabric or polyester fabric from which many umbrellas are made tends to pucker when embroidered and then stretched tight. It looked okay on the sample that I had, but I think a simple silk-screened imprint is slicker and more polished way to go.

You can also have umbrellas done with all over four color process printing, which is an awesome custom promotion. However, I believe that the minimum quantities for this kind of a logo treatment are quite high (maybe in the 500-1000 piece range) and I would count on a minimum of a 90 day lead time as this is done custom overseas.

Three of my favorite suppliers of promotional umbrellas are: Peerless Umbrella, Avaline, and Rainkist. All three of them are reliable, high performance suppliers and do good work.

I really like the innovative aspects of the patented Rainkist Windefyer. It has a unique Square Canopy shape, and the double overlapping canopy funnels wind to prevent umbrella from inverting. It has a 64" arc and a pinch proof runner to protect fingers and then a comfortable squishi gel handle. It is a little spendy as an advertising specialties umbrella, but if you are looking for a nice gift for your next conference or trade show, this would be a winning idea.

I was working on the web tonight and researching tradeshows. I think I am going to write a series of articles about marketing ones company at the top trade shows. I did not realize that there was so much volatility among the top trade shows, and that a couple of tradeshows Comdex and E3 that were the top tradeshows just a couple of years ago are either dormant or entirely restructured. It appears that the granddaddy of all trade shows as of this writing is CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. It has over 140,000 attendees! I'd love to attend that show.

I've always dreamed of attending a major auto show as well. My brother Daniel and I both love cars, and we have talked about flying into Detroit to attend the Detroit Auto Show. Both of us have families and limited vacation time, and it has not happened yet, but some day it will.

I think it is shows like CES that have driven the demand for flash drives in the promotional products industry. I would say that they are the hot promotional products story of the last five years, as five years ago they practically didn't exist. We have sold thousands of flash drives, and I believe that we have sorted through the junk and selected a couple of the highest quality suppliers. You can check out American Promotions' flash drives here.

I love mountain biking. Today, I would love to be up on the Mountain. I cannot believe that it is the third week of October and that the temperature today in Central Point, Oregon is 75 degrees Fahrenheit! I just longingly look out the big picture window in my office wishing that I was not sitting in front of this flat screen, but I really don't have that option today.

We just sold a sizable order of Anvil Dri-Release T-shirts and I realized that these would be great for mountain biking and they would make a great promotion for a sports themed promotion or company gift. My cursory research indicates that our price for this Anvil t-shirt is one of the best prices on the web.

Yesterday was a wonderful day with my family. We had our weekly Family Home Evening. We hold this on Monday nights every week, and it is a night that we set aside solely for family togetherness. Sometimes, we plan family events. At other times, we have a religious lesson or message. Earlier this summer, we built a chicken run for our chicken coop. Sometimes, the evening is completely unstructured, and we just jump on the trampoline or chase each other around the house. I work long hours, and my children really look forward to this. They are ages 2 to 10 and I hope that they don't grow out of it, although I am sure that is just wishful thinking.

Last night, we gathered long dead sticks in the meadow area in our front yard and we raked giant pine needles. The kids are using these raw materials to build a lean-to style shelters against the pool house and against a closely positioned grouping of four oak trees out in the meadow. It is so adorable to see them plan and construct. Their goal is to not use any items that are not native to our yard. We would place the long narly oak branches against the trunk of the tree and try to lay them and interweave them in a way as to get a reasonably sturdy structure. The kids then thatch the frame with the big pine needles and line the floors with soft moss. (I'm sure that the hundreds of species of spiders that call are property home are going to be very grateful to the kids for these huts).

I'm just glad for times like last night and for the memories they create.

And since this is a promotional products blog, and since the weather is starting to turn chill, I would really enjoy a classic jacket like this Devon & Jones Clubhouse Jacket.

Make Your Logo "Wrinkle-Free"

I woke up this morning before 5:00 a.m.. I couldn't really sleep. When that happens, my mind starts pouring over all of the things that I have to do. But, then I just lay there and don't do anything. It's not very effective. I decided to get up and to start my day, and try to squeeze in a blog post and some extra work. I showered, shaved and got ready. I then grabbed a shirt that I had already worn once before, a Land's End no-iron shirt. However, I had crumpled it onto a shelf in my closet, and the shirt did need ironing.

Parenthetically, I love the Land's End no-iron shirts. They are attractive, they are very durable, and if you hang them up straight out of the dryer, then you really don't need to iron them and they look just as crisp as if they have been professionally laundered and pressed.

Back to my ironing. So anyway, I start ironing this shirt, and I finish the two fronts, the collar the back and one of the sleeves, and then I turn the shirt over to do the final sleeve, and there in orange red glory was the reason I should not have shoved this into my closet in the first place. The last time I wore it, my two-year-old girl had taken a chubby, friendly hand and smeared the sleeve with spaghetti sauce and then smiled up at me with a big sticky grin. Fortunately this shirt has some kind of stain guard on it, but I couldn't wear it today.

Anyway, this little insignificant, but time-wasting experience reminded me how much I love my daughter, but it also got me wondering if American Promotions offers a no-iron shirt. The closest thing I found was this Port Authority Long & Short Sleeve Easy Care/Soil Release Shirt. It is a woven shirt by SanMar. This is a quality shirt, and the price with a corporate embroidered logo is very competitive. It is not truly 'no-iron.' It is wrinkle-resistant.

I do not think that this is quite as dressy or as care-free as the Land's End version, but it is a lot less expensive and gives the promotional apparel buyer a lot of shirt for the money.

Cutter & Buck

We recently added a new section to our website titled Corporate and Executive Gifts. We wanted to feature promotional products and premiums of a significantly higher quality that could be given with confidence when the goal to impress or thank the recipient is paramount. These are executive gifts that can be given when taste and quality really matter.

The first sub-category in this new area of the website is Cutter & Buck accessories. It includes luggage, luggage tags, writing instruments, padfolios, totes, compu-briefs, picture frames and drinkware. Every single one of these 100+ items portray the Cutter & Buck lifestyle. Parenthetically, it always seems like a pretentious thing to say that a brand conveys a "lifestyle." However, there are brands out there that are truly successful in selling, at the very least, some kind of emotional aspiration to a lifestyle. Polo Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade, Ben Sherman and The North Face are just a few that come to mind.

Cutter & Buck is not as prominent in the cultural landscape as these other brands, but I do think that it is a successful brand at shaping a cohesive image and a lifestyle that says "success" and "motivation."

Cutter & Buck accessories make beautiful corporate gifts or premiums and are perfect for rewarding exceptional customers or employees. Here is an example of one of my favorites.

Cutter & Buck Desktop Photo Box

I have been learning how to use AdWords, and I have been trying my own hand at crafting a good keyword campaign. It is a time consuming and detailed process, and it requires endless monitoring of data.

It is also very interesting. I've been interested since college in economics and statistics, and AdWords gives the average guy a chance to test his skill at the actuarial art. There is a touch of linguistics in the whole process as well. I've discovered that there are literally dozens (and in some cases hundreds) of ways to say exactly the same thing, and yet certain variations of search terms occur with far more prevalance than others. Not every mind follows the same thought pattern when determining how to conduct an online search, and the paths that some minds follow are just plain weird.

One of the product categories that we are working to advertise are the H2Go line of water and sport bottles. They are durable and attractive and our company has sold thousands of them in the past.

We'll see how well it works.

Hawaiian Theme Promotions

It must be luau season again, because we are getting a lot of interest in Hawaiian Themed Promotions on the American Promotions website. We just had an order for 75 Hawaiian shirts with embroidery on the back, and we have had a lot of interest in Hawaiian tote bags.

It is always interesting to me what sells and what doesn't in our industry and the market is far from predictable. But with Hawaiian and other island themed parties and promotions, it is easy to see the appeal. The island lifestyle is an intoxicating dream for most Americans. This explains the success of brands like Tommy Bahama, whose entire lifestyle brand is meant to evoke a kind of stylized island experience.

Luau's are a very popular form of summer company party, and a luau is a good way to provide something a little different in place of the company bar-b-que.

DILBERT - Imprint Stress Toy

Working folk, like myself, love Dilbert. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert has created a group of characters that create a sometimes biting but mostly gentle satire about heartlessness, bureaucracy, greed, stupidity, office politics and mediocrity in the American corporate experience.

I think that many companies are at least somewhat aware of their inefficiencies and quirks, and these fun and coy stress toys can give any company or human resource department a way to laugh at itself and show employee appreciation. The whole gang is available, so check them out:
Dilbert stress toy, Catbert stress toy, Dogbert stress toy, Alice stress toy, The Boss stress toy, Wally stress toy

Patriotic Stress Toys

Promotional stress toys, also referred to as stress relievers or stress balls come in a huge assortment of types. My favorite supplier is Ariel Premium Supply. They have a very deep selection of styles.

Here are a handful of styles for your company's Fourth of July or other patriotic themed promotion:

Uncle Sam Hat Stress Toy

American Eagle Stress Toy

United States Stress Toy


Statue of Liberty Stress Toy

Landing The Account

I have been in the promotional products business for more than 10 years. The bulk of those years, our company obtained business the old fashioned way: we worked through cold calls, direct marketing and relationship marketing (which was by far the most successful).

However, about two years ago, under the wise and tenacious direction of my partner, LaRae Crane, we started a major web initiative to move the majority of our sales online. We are well into that process.

Our company had tried to land an order with the Swire Coca-Cola account in Draper, Utah (the local Coca-Cola bottler) for the last eight years. We had sent them materials, called on them, provided quotes. However, we had never landed an order.

However, without any notice, a buyer with Swire Coca-Cola contacted us after browsing the website of an H2GO water bottle. He needed a large order to do cooperatively with the Training Table Restaurant, and he contacted our office and asked us to "sharpen our pencil." We landed that order with this item:

I am just amazed at the power of the web. When you have what people want, presented in an attractive and service-friendly way, they come looking for you.

It has been some time since I published in this blog, and I have decided to renew my commitment to it. People who are searching for promotional products need advice as there is an avalanche choices and options, and yet there is so much product out there that is of poor quality or is not fulfilled in a timely way.

Our company, American Promotions has been around for more than ten years, and our employees have poured their heart and souls into making the company a model of service and courtesy. We really do strive to satisfy the customer and do the little extras that keep customers coming back. My brother Jeff publishes a blog with the motto "Improve . . . . Exponentially" . He does not work for our company, but I enjoy the blog, and I think he has some valuable things to say. I think improvement ultimately should be the goal of any company or individual, to build on what one knows to become incrementally and ultimately exponentially better than they were before. The best organizations and people contribute to society in ways beyond what they sell.

One of the best companys in our industry is Leed's. They are a supplier of all types of promotional items but with a particular emphasis on bags, padfolios and desk accessories. They have one of the most reliable fulfillment departments in the industry and they are able to do much of what they do at rush speeds. The thing that makes their company so phenomenal is they do what they say they will do. They are fast, professional and an example to the entire industry of innovation.

Our company distributes the entire Leed's line, but here are a few of the Leeds bestsellers:

Excel Sport Meeting Tote (Leeds #1 Best Seller)
Excel Sport Utility Tote
Roadster Gift Set
DuraHyde Zippered Padfolio
Manchester Zippered Padfolio
Connections 12-Can Collapsible Cooler
7" x 5.5" Spectra Journal Notebook

I will blog about Leeds Promotional Products and advertising specialties again, as they have so much to offer. And next time, I'll throw in a few pictures.