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About two years ago, I pulled the trigger on an issue I’d struggled with for several years—whether to get involved with promotional products and how to do it right.
My limited experience with this product line was disappointing. We said we offered promotional products to our customers, but we dabbled at best. A few sales executives sold the majority of the promotional products business at our company, spending an inordinate amount of time searching and then struggling with the promotional product supplier culture, which is much different than our traditional supplier base. Another issue simply was my attitude toward promotional products. I always viewed myself and our company as a group that helped customers operate more efficiently. We weren’t a company that provided “stuff” that had questionable value. Boy, was I off base.
The facts were that our typical customers were changing from “operations” people to “marketing” types, and the marketing people we talked to about printed pieces or a direct mail campaign also made decisions on promotional items. Also, the promotional products industry is a $16 billion to $17 billion market and growing. Most providers are one- or two-person companies operating out of their homes. With distribution and e-commerce capability, we could certainly offer additional value to customers.
"We joined the right promotional product groups, purchased the right software, hired a great person from the industry, but most importantly we changed our thinking. "
Logic told me that I should get more involved, but I had no idea where to begin, because what we were doing up to that point was certainly not effective. Fortunately for me, a friend who I met through one of the DMIA networking events—we’ll call him Kevin—had plunged into promotional products a few years earlier. Kevin’s company was very successful with promotional products, and the product category already represented a substantial part of his company’s sales. But his path to success was filled with wrong turns and pitfalls, and Kevin shared them all and kept me on the right road. What an opportunity!
We spent several days with Kevin as he mapped his success. We were all eyes and ears. Not surprisingly, we discovered that going about it the right way required investment in the right people, systems and overall approach. But it’s not often that you can learn so much of “the right way” so quickly and have assurance that it’s the right path. We joined the right promotional product groups, purchased the right software, hired a great person from the industry, but most importantly we changed our thinking. We saw promotional products as another way we could bring value to customers and future customers to make their marketing efforts, events or brand promotion more effective. And we could add the value of distribution, e-commerce and single sourcing for print and promotional items. We also learned that providing a “program” was a better approach than reacting to each opportunity. Sound like the print business?
It has been almost two years since we took the plunge, and it is by far our fastest-growing product category. Sales more than tripled the first year and will more than double the second year. Plus, we are more valuable to our customers today because we offer more complete solutions to marketing campaigns, events or new brand rollouts. We also just implemented our first company store.
We still have some things to work on, because not all of our sales executives are completely comfortable with the product category yet, but we are getting closer. Interestingly, the female sales executives do much better than their male counterparts. The guys used to dismiss this performance issue by saying “It’s because guys prefer utilitarian, functional things and all those promotional products are just trivial, fun things that have no purpose.” I think we all know better now.
The good news is that promotional products fit our business model very nicely and actually make our traditional “print” business that much stronger. I have to thank my friend Kevin for his invaluable help in showing me the right road and the DMIA for creating the environment to make this sharing possible.