Starting a promotional products company is not easy. Adding promotional products to a marketing company that is established in print is also not a simple task. How do you know which suppliers are good and which suppliers are bad. How do you know if you are getting good pricing or what the lead times are for hundreds if not thousands of the same item. Welcome to the promotional products industry. It sounds like you need to join a promotional products organization.
Now is a good time to take inventory. What do you need from the organization?
- Do you need industry education?
- Do you want access to industry magazines?
- Do you want to be able to print your logo on a catalog of pre selected products?
- Do you need help sourcing products?
- Do you need help getting better pricing on the products that you source?
- Do you need financing on larger orders?
- Do you need help importing?
- Do you want trade shows to meet suppliers?
- Do you want personalized help finding a product if you get stuck?
There are so many reasons to align with others in the promotional industry. The most obvious is that many of us excel in selling and hate doing the rest of the stuff like accounting, inventory, facility maintenance and all the other stuff that goes with having a warehouse and having employees and transactions. If you join the right company, you can have all of those things taken care of for you.
The first promotional products organization to discuss is PPAI. PPAI is the non profit trade group of the promotional products industry. It caters primarily to the United States and companies in other countries who target the United States. They have software for sourcing but it is not what they are known for. PPAI is known for having the best trade show in the industry. They hold the PPAI Show once a year in Las Vegas. It used to be held in Texas for decades but it moved to Las Vegas. While it is virtual this year, I have no doubt it will be going strong in 2022.