Photo: Austin Distel  /  Unsplash.com

 

 

The November issue of PPB shared a distributor’s question regarding how best to handle a new customer who took the artwork the distributor had produced and used another vendor for their project. Several industry professionals shared their advice and experiences handling similar situations.

That happened to me a few years ago. I went to the screen printer and threatened to sue him for using our artwork. We agreed and they ended up donating the 500 shirts and paid us for our artwork. The customer also came back to me knowing that what they did was not legit and that I could have also sued them. They were grateful for the free shirts, and I snagged the rest of both their wearable and ad specialty business. Additionally, if they wanted to use the same artwork we generated, we had them pay for the artwork. Considering it was a U.S. government facility and ignorant about ordering from an ad specialty company, and me being a small business, they quickly apologized and we became instant friends.

Carol Hartwig
Account Executive
Promotional Solutions
Ransomville, New York

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In November, PPB Newslink reported that distributor Custom Ink acquired Swag.com, a promotional products distributor and “gifting-as-a-service” platform provider. Observers have noted that the acquisition better positions Custom Ink as a digital player in the corporate gifting market.

Speed kills and so does data. Smart move by Custom Ink; when you can acquire an online platform with some relevancy, it is impossible to lose. Just ask Discount Mugs after they acquired Branders, or ePromo after they snagged Motivators. Of course, there are many more. Online data lists are the new "sales list" that people valued so much in the last century. This is the tip of the online acquisition iceberg in our industry—buckle up.

Jim Franklyn
Vice President of Business Development
Swag Promo
Atlanta, Georgia
PPAI 562712, D5 

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James Khattak is news editor of PPB.