Choosing your promotional product supplier isn’t an easy task. But we’ve made it easier with these 5 easy steps. Make sure you’re purchasing your promotional products from an industry-specific supplier.
1. Promotional Product Supplier Near Me
To save on shipping costs you may want to look for a supplier near you. You can do this by performing a Google Search and typing in your keywords “promotional products” followed by your city + state. Like “promotional products thousand oaks ca”. This will give you a list of promotional products suppliers in your area. Having a promotional product supplier in your area is ideal to work with considering they’re close by and you could potentially save a lot of money on shipping.
Sourcing Promotional Products
And don’t worry about your promotional product supplier not having the merchandise you’re looking for. They can source it for you. So if you’re looking for custom apparel and come across a website that doesn’t have any promotional apparel on their website that shouldn’t concern you. Most promotional product suppliers should be able to source any product that you’re looking for to suit your needs.
2. Promotional Products Custom Logo
Your promotional product supplier should be able to provide you with the details on how to send artwork to them. And if not vector-ready artwork they should be able to help you find the artwork you need. Or have an in-house graphic artist that can convert your logo or artwork into a vector file.
3. Promotional Product Production Schedule
Your supplier should be able to work with you on a production schedule. Most promotional product orders are generally produced in 7-10 business days if done locally. You’re looking at longer production times if your production is done overseas. Sometimes over two weeks of production time. Make sure your supplier can work with you and your deadlines to get you what you need on time.
4. Industry Membership
You can tell the difference between a promotional product supplier or not if they have an industry-specific membership. Such memberships are ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute), PPAI (Promotional Products Association International) and even the SAGE advantage membership. All of these come with a numeric code to identify your supplier as a member of one of these organizations.
5. Supplier Coded Pricing
Another way to choose your promotional products supplier is to know that they have coded pricing. If they do not have coded pricing on their website or catalog then they are most likely a distributor in the industry. Coded pricing is designated by a letter to help determine the discount given to the distributor. For instance, on the below image you can see that this product is coded on a 4C. Which means all 4 columns are coded to the letter C.
