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We are really excited to announce the release of Sourcing Wizard, our brand new promo product App for the iPad. It gives you:

• Access to over 100,000 promotional products
• The ability to search by theme, keyword, price or category
• The ability to build an Ideas List basket and email this to friends, colleagues or even to us for a quote

In every walk of like things can go wrong. Naturally, we are not exempt from that. We do all we can to avoid disasters in the first place, but when the worst happens, we feel it is incumbent on us not just to put it right, but to compensate our customers for any inconvenience. So when we say 'if we goof, we pay' we mean just that!

But let us be quite clear what we mean:

• If the print and some or all of the products we supply are not up to your reasonable expectations, we will replace the faulty ones free of charge. That goes without saying (but we said it anyway!). But we go further than that...
• If, when ordering, you have told us that the goods are required by a particular date, by accepting your order we also take full responsibility for your deadline. So if for whatever reason we fail to deliver by the date or time required, we will still deliver the goods, albeit late, but we just won't charge you for them!

Exciting news for our customers using our warehousing, distribution and fulfilment facilities. We have now completed extensive new warehousing arrangements that will allow us to offer you far greater flexibility, better pricing and faster turnaround times.

Anyone interested in such arrangements should talk with us first, but here is a brief synopsis of what we can offer:

Warehousing 

• Storage at very competitive rates
• Barcoding
• CCTV website feed

 Fulfilment

• Picking, packing & dispatch
• Own packaging option without surcharge
• Same day (requests before 12) or next day dispatch and delivery
• Excellent postal/courier rates
• Pallet rates available

 Stock management

• Reorder level management
• Stock reports available on demand
• Full dispatch history available on demand

 Pricing

• No set up costs
• Time and space charging only
• No additional monthly fees (admin, document insertion, minimum order etc)

We always try to find ways to make our customer's lives easier and pricing is one area in which people can get confused. Our research showed that when people believed a pen would cost them, say, 20p each, the reality might be 35p. How is this possible?

Pricing promotional products in pretty much all cases takes into account several different cost elements such as:

• The cost of the item itself.
• The decoration cost per colour, per position per unit.
• The origination cost of the decoration template
• The equipment set up cost per colour, per position.
• Carriage (from the manufacturer/printer to the customer).

.... and possibly also (depending on what is required, quantities, where goods are coming from, when they are required etc)

• Import tariffs.
• Express production charges.
• Mould or product origination costs
• Minimum print charges.
• Total ink coverage
• Currency fluctuations
• Express carriage charges

Now why, I ask, would you want to know the cost of each and every element? But typically that is exactly what your average promotional products distributor provides. At best it is like selling someone a car and giving them a component by component break down of the price! At worst, it is an attempt to fudge the issue of pricing altogether.

We decided almost a year ago that we didn't want to play that game any more. Having discussed the matter with some of our key customers, we developed our Clear Pricing Policy. Simply put, if you ask us for a quotation for, say, 2,500 pens, printed in 2 colours, we will give you a single price for providing you with exactly that delivered to you door thus:

2500 XYZ Pens, printed 2 colours to the barrel @ £1,025 + VAT delivered

If you want an option for printing on the clip in 1 colour as well, then you will receive it thus:

2500 XYZ Pens, additional cost for 1 colour print to clip @ £197 + VAT

No confusion, no extras, no nasty surprises. That's what our Clear Pricing Policy is all about.

Like most companies we depend on good suppliers to make sure we can keep our customers happy and, more than that, impress them, we hope. I have to acknowledge Senator in this respect - not just a supplier of great products, but a great supplier.

It has it rewards for them too, of course. Being good to us has meant we have more than doubled the business we do with them over the past year. They even popped round the other day to present us with a performance award which now sits proudly on a window ledge and sparkles whenever the sun shines (not often then!).

We were recently given a brief to come up with some simple merchandise for the City of York. Their new, very bright and colourful logos, promoting the 4 threads of businesses the city is looking to attract, is certainly not suited to every product. But we immediately thought of the new Senator Xtreme Branded Super Hit pens - an old favourite in brand new clothes.

Presenting the concept well was key, so we turned to Senator for assistance and within just over an hour we received a terrific visual to present the client. It is great to have suppliers that willing and helpful.

You can see their full product range here.