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.