Promotional Products Articles & Promotional Newsletters Educational

Purchasing promotional products, such as corporate apparel, online provides five distinct advantages: greater variety, affordable pricing, convenience, excellent customer service, and faster ordering.

Manufacturers will often showcase their complete line of products on the internet, providing you with a larger variety of products to chose from. With numerous manufacturers online, you have the ability to compare pricing and quality easily, instead of spending your time looking through thousands of catalogs that dominate your office.

Affordable pricing is available on the internet, but you have to search for it. Type any promotional product keywords into your chosen search engine and look through the results until you find a qualified company with discount pricing. Another great idea is to select an item and ask a few different companies to give you a quote with the cost of freight included. Asking for the quote to include the cost of freight will result in a number much closer to the actual, final cost.

How can internet companies sell the identical products for less than other distributors? In the past, promotional items have usually been sold by a distributor with outside sales people who travel to your company location, show you samples, and walk you through the process of placing an order. Outside sales people are the foremost cost to an off-line distributor. This expense is added into the price of the promotional item you are purchasing, thus elevating your total cost. When buying discount promotional products online, this extra charge is eliminated and you save money.

Convenience and online ordering go hand in hand. Every successful online company offers ordering with encrypted forms to secure your purchasing information. It is always necessary to send artwork to your promotional products company, but this is made quite easy with an online form. Online ordering gives you the convenience of placing your order at anytime you prefer, twenty-four hours a day.

Some online distributors also provide customer service departments with lengthy hours. These departments are set up to take your phone calls, walk you through rush orders, and to answer any questions. If e-mail is your preferred method of communication, working with an online company is that much easier. Using e-mail is also a wonderful way to document your entire ordering process. You can e-mail a question to your distributor, go to lunch, and it will be answered by the time you return.
Rapid ordering time is the fifth advantage of the online purchase. I have personally visited hundreds of clients. This necessitates an appointment, which must work for both parties’ schedules. The off-line salesperson is required to interpret your needs prior to your first meeting. They carry with them what samples and catalogs they have available, but these might not be of interest to your company and thus your ordering time will be extended for a second or third meeting. If questions arise about product availability, turn around time, or any other factory sensitive inquiries, the salesperson will need to return to his workplace in order to contact the factory to answer your question. When ordering from an online distributor, the customer service team is already at their desks, so they can contact the factory with your questions right away and get back to you immediately.

These are five fantastic reasons for purchasing promotional products online, but I must remind you, lest you forget, that there are always some pros and cons to everything. Online promotional products distributors work incredibly hard to cut costs and to pass the savings on to you. This means, however, that these companies must charge for samples and require pre-payment. Sample charges insure that the company will not lose income by giving away products to non-customers, because doing so would raise costs for the real customer. Paying in advance is common among internet purchasing in general, and a necessity for online companies to insure payment. Pre-payment should not be a concern. Your right to receive a quality product is always maintained, but now an enormous savings comes with it.

One last tip, chose an online company that has or has had in-house embroidery or screen printing facilities. My experience has shown that these companies have greater control of expediting your orders, a more in-depth knowledge of imprinting, advanced quality control, and a general tendency to complete rush orders faster.

Most successful businesses are now purchasing their promotional products and corporate apparel from these qualified online companies. The advantages are numerous; convenience, speed, variety, accountability, customer service, and most importantly, savings.