The production process from placing an order to delivery of finished goods in the promotional gifts industry has always been a multiple stage process. The Business Gift Supplier is almost like a personal shopper for his client, discussing ideas, providing costs, discussing lead times. Then samples are posted out to ensure that the product matches the exact requirements given – great effort and detail is put into the early stages to assist the client.

There is also the issue of visualising the end result, something that is vital for the client when making important decisions and often for the person signing the order and therefore the funds off.  “I really like this product, but how will my logo look?” is a common question or the client will want to see an item in a different colour. 

Obviously with email and the web, we are able to view or send data instantly and this provides answers to most of the questions raised, without delaying an order on a potentially short lead time.

But the visual side of the end result has been an area that has either caused delays or potentially prevented an order from progressing due to the nervousness generated – people do get nervous about spending budget!

This is a hurdle no longer, with fantastic Virtual Sample software using images of the products which are available online. Logos on the item can be “removed”, it is simple to upload your logo which can then be positioned, moved, stretched and bent to fit well onto any business gift idea you are looking at. This can then be emailed, saved as a jpeg and printed out, and is invaluable for that meeting where you need to convince the boss to sign off the spend!

Our promotional gifts website (www.steel-city.co.uk) has a fantastic virtual sample tool and you can produce a guide visual from any item on the site in minutes. This is so easy to use and if you should have problems, a member of the Steel City Marketing sales team would be more than happy to help you out and take you through each stage. Please call on 0114 2754150.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 5:08 pm and is filed under SCM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.