Proforma •••• Custom eCommerce Success

Proforma •••• Custom eCommerce Success.

Learn more about Proforma’s web-based ProEcom platform and how it helped VR Business Brokers better manage their business, control expenses and build their brand!

Holiday Time Is Here…Believe it or Not!

As you may have noticed, holiday decorations are already making their way into stores, malls and even the lobby of my son’s daycare center.  Remember when the garland and tinsel waited to make their yearly appearance until after Santa arrived on Thanksgiving morning?  Those days are over!

Here at Proforma Innovative Ideas, we are in full-holiday mode helping our clients plan for their holiday gift and greeting needs.  Clients have begun placing orders for greeting cards, holiday party invitations, food gifts and thank you gifts for their customers and employees.  Here are a couple of quick gift giving facts about our holiday programs:

• Our chocolate and food gifts are always packaged fresh to order to insure that the gift is as fresh as possible when it arrives at your client’s home or office.  You will not get this kid of freshness from a big-box retailer or a kiosk at the mall!
• We have a useful holiday greeting card website www.mylogoholidaycards.com to help our clients find the perfect greeting cards.  Order minimums start at 25 cards and we can handle the mailing also!
• With access to promotional items from over 5,000 sources, we can find the perfect gift for your needs.  Check out our online store to see some ideas or our online holiday catalog for some thought starters.
• Calendars are a great holiday gift that keeps your message in front of your client’s all year long.

If you have a need for holiday items, we would love to help!  Please contact us at innovative.ideas@proforma.com for more information, quotes and samples!

Quick Tip: Taking Care of your Apparel

Every once in a while, a client will ask us for advice on keeping their newly embroidered apparel looking new for as long as possible.  In years past, we have always advised to simply follow the care instructions on the garment.

Recently, an apparel vendor rep also recommended a tip that we have tested and it works brilliantly.  Their advice, to avoid collar-curling, continuous shrinking and color fading, is to simply hang dry the item the first time you wash it.  By hanging/air drying your apparel after the first wash, the fibers have a chance to react naturally to the laundering process and will hold-up better when you do tumble dry them (if the care instructions allow.)

There are many other factors, including fiber content and overall product quality, that also come into play when determining how long a particular item will look like new, but it will never hurt (or cost you a dime) to hang that new polo shirt to dry the first time.

Making Travel Just a Little Bit Easier

I love to travel.  Many years ago, before I owned Proforma Innovative Ideas, I had the luxury of vacationing and leaving work, and my computer behind.  Not anymore!

As a business owner, traveling with a laptop, external hard drive, smartphone, and other random business tools is a must.  Having the option to connect to the office is a necessity and getting all of the requisite technology, along with a two-year old child, through airport security can be quite a task.   Past trips through airport security have required taking my laptop out of its padded case and hoping it makes it “down the line” without being damaged or stolen.

Thankfully the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and many of our briefcase and bag suppliers have come up with a plan to make it easier to travel with your laptop.   We now offer our clients the ability to promote their company and brand on “checkpoint-friendly” laptop bags, briefcases and backpacks.  These bags are designed to fold open, thus allowing the TSA x-ray technicians to get a clear look at the laptop, while allowing the laptop itself to remain safely in the bag.

Improving the quality of someone’s life is one of the best ways to create a positive image around your brand or company.  If you are interested in learning more about our “TSA Approved” bag options and how they can help you promote your brand, please contact us at innovative.ideas@proforma.com.

Promote your “Green” Products on Paper?

I always like to make it a point to share stories with you about marketing items that grab my attention.  Over the years, one of the most successful companies at grabbing my attention, by delivering creative marketing messages to my home mailbox, has been Honda.

This weekend, Honda made another impression when a brochure for their new 2010 Insight Hybrid landed in my mailbox on Saturday afternoon.  Not only is the piece creative (I will get to that in a minute) but it also begs the question, ” How do you manage to market a product designed to promote a sustainable, “green” lifestyle while printing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of brochures?”  In this case, Honda has done a couple of things to make sure that you know that the brochures is as “green” as the cars they are building.

The major way this is done is through the use of a certified paper stock and by including the FSC or Forestry Stewardship Council logo and certification number on the back of the brochure.  This logo tells me that the piece is printed on 100% recycled paper stock and that natural inks were used to print the graphics.  To learn more about the FSC and their mission, please CLICK HERE.

On the inside, front cover of the brochure, there is a small “seed disc” attached to the lower left-hand corner.  Next to the disc are directions for planting the seed disc in order to grow your very own black-eyed susans.  Very cool!

From there the brochure unfolds like a children’s pop-up book to reveal all of the Insight’s new features and environmental benefits.  This pop-up element also grabs your attention and helps differentiate Honda’s message from the fifteen other offers in Saturday’s mail. I may not be in the market for a hybrid sedan, but Honda definitely let me know that they have a new “dog in the fight” and are coming after the Toyota Prius.

If you are interested in learning more about how Proforma Innovative Ideas can help your organization use environmentally friendly products and practices to promote your business and products in creative ways, please let us know.  We can be reached at www.mylogopromo.com.

New Product Just In Time for Spring: Golf Buddy

It is rare that a hot, new consumer product is immediately available to the promotional products marketplace, but every once in a while we get lucky.  As the weather turns nice, golf promotions heat up and the much hyped Golf Buddy is here.

The Golf Buddy is a GPS rangefinder that uses the accuracy of the GPS satellite system and a preloaded database of 20,000 golf courses in the USA and Canada to give golfers the most accurate “on the course” data possible.  With this useful tool, your clients will be able to determine driving distance, hole positioning, score tracking and course location, from the palm of their hand, while on the course.

The best part is that every time they reach into their pocket and turn the Golf Buddy on, they will see your logo on the welcome screen. If you assume that the average golfer will need to know the yardage of two shots per hole, then you can assume that they will see your logo 36 times for each round of golf they play.  If your client only averages one round per week, from June 15th through the end of September, they  would see your logo 576 times before October 1, 2009!

There are no annual fees and no course download charges, so you can feel comfortable knowing that your next golf promotion we be a huge success.  If you are interested in learning more about the product and how you could use it for your next golf tournament, employee incentive program or custom gift, please email us at innovative.ideas@proforma.com.

Lessons Learned: Inventory Levels

The past couple weeks have been busy at Proforma Innovative Ideas.  With marketing needs building up, many of our clients have begun to process orders that have been on the radar screen for quite some time.  As orders have been processed, an interesting trend has shown up with many of our vendors…inventory availability issues.

In years past, inventory levels of popular items has never been a problem.  Our vast network of suppliers have always had more than enough stock in warehouses across the US.  This large supply of inventory allowed our clients to process orders at the last minute, with little worry that their first choice of products was going to be available.  For the foreseeable future, this may not be the case.

As it turns out suppliers’ ability to stock large inventories was made possible by their ability to secure inexpensive credit terms from their banks and investors.  As it has become increasingly difficult to secure credit, our suppliers have been forced to reduce inventory levels and delay the restocking of many items.

True Story:

Last week we received an order for 3,000 imprinted t-shirts.  The client had been thinking about the project for quite some time and decided that it was time to move the order forward.  They reviewed many shirt samples and clearly liked a specific shirt.  As we began to process the order, it soon became clear that their were going to be some issues.

Evidently someone else fell in love with this shirt also.  The mill we were expecting to supply the shirts had run out of stock in some of the colors we needed.    We immediately began a search to see where we could source the shirts from, in time to meet our client’s event date.  After two days of work, and by having shirts shipped from multiple locations, we were eventually able to find all of the shirts necessary to meet the client’s needs and the shirts were delivered on time.  In this case, we were lucky, but I’m not sure that this will be the case every time.

Lesson Learned: For the foreseeable future, it appears that many promotional product manufacturers are going to be keeping lower inventory levels than in the past.  What this means for Proforma Innovative Ideas and our clients is that we need to be planning ahead to avoid as many of these inventory issues as possible.  While it will always be possible to fulfill the inevitable rush order, it may not be possible with the exact items that you want. 

As a result, let’s work together to make sure that we allow enough time to properly plan your upcoming projects, reserve inventories and make your projects a success!

As always, you can visit our website at www.mylogopromo.com or give us a call at 317-823-9004.

Proforma Ranked #1

As many of you know, being part of a great team is priceless.  Promo Marketing Magazine announced their annual list of the Top 50 promotional products distributors and the Proforma family of distributors ranked #1!  Please see the link below for the entire article.

Here are Proforma Innovative Ideas, we are very proud to be part of the Proforma family and really appreciate all that Proforma does to help us provide our clients with the best possible service.

http://tinyurl.com/oy7h8b

New Audio Blog Post – The JoeMo

The JoeMo Audio Blog

We have started a series of audio blogs. If you would rather listen than read, about promotional product ideas, new print ideas and marketing in general, check this out!

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