Key Takeaways
• Print companies can enter promo by building strong supplier relationships and learning a focused product line rather than chasing every request.
• Combining print, promo, apparel and packaging creates opportunities to expand existing accounts through cohesive branded campaigns.
• Protecting margins, showing samples early and understanding both buyers and end-users can help distributors avoid costly mistakes.
If you look at some of the most successful companies that sell both print and promo, they probably make it look effortless. That isn’t always the case. Even the most successful companies face growing pains and hiccups on the road.
At the PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas on Sept. 23, Theresa Hegel, executive editor of special projects & sustainability at ASI, led a panel discussion called “Beyond Ink: Real-World Lessons From Printers Selling Promo” that brought together experienced print and promo professionals to educate distributors and printers looking to diversify and expand their sales, and hopefully gain confidence from the firsthand insight.
What’s the First Step?
So, you’ve decided to expand into print or promo. But what’s the first tangible step? Dana Zezzo, vice president of strategic growth for Counselor Top 40 supplier ASB (asi/120075), said that many print distributors go into promo after a customer explicitly asks them for products – more often than not, he said, it’s something a little more niche than a plain T-shirt or a simple coffee mug. Whether the ask is simple or complicated, Zezzo said that a distributor should start by getting in contact with a supplier – many have regional sales reps that you can find for your geographic area.
“The promo vendors are awesome,” he said. “They’re always trying to expand their portfolio of customers.”
When you have a supplier that you like, Zezzo recommended that the distributor learn their product offering and sell based on that.
“Learn them and proactively sell their line,” he said. “And try to avoid the random, crazy requests. You’ll control your growth instead of just reacting to demand.”
Nathan Goldberg, CEO of Specialized (asi/331350), said that, unlike print, when you work with a promotional products supplier, you don’t have to worry about investing in equipment, which is often music to a printer’s ears.
Examples of Success
Goldberg brought up an example of a recent win that blended print and promo together – a baby kit for the streaming service Paramount Plus. Employees, vendors and customers with babies would receive kits with an assortment of products all in a branded package – something that Goldberg says can all come from you if you’re capable.
“The nice thing about when you have both sides of printing, promo and apparel, you can do the packaging, you can do the custom messaging. ‘Congratulations on your new capital expenditure,’” Goldberg said to laughs in the room. “And you can do all of the items that go inside of the box.”
Goldberg added that his ethos when it comes to jobs like this is simply not saying no to a request and figuring things out.
That habit of saying yes is how the third panelist, Megan O’Reilly, co-owner of Pitch Black Printing Co. (asi/296267), which originally started in the fine art printing world and has since expanded as a result of demand, found herself adding promotional products to clients like a record store.
“They’ve been around since the late ’70s, and when we started working with them it was just business cards,” she said. They also worked on gift certificates, but noticed that they had a strong web presence from selling vinyl records online across the U.S. for so long. That led to T-shirts. “We’re printing T-shirts for them, and it was less about learning the vendors and products to sell them and more about brand management for our customers – knowing our customers really well.”
What do record buyers need? Tote bags to carry their records. And then the next sale was in place.
You can’t be a psychic, but if you’re taking on a customer, you need to consider what the end-user wants, and what your customer wants to convey to them. O’Reilly stressed that knowing your customer and their brand is crucial, because they might not know the promotional tools at their disposal or the products they could be selling, and your expertise is what makes you valuable.
O’Reilly added that by understanding the full scope of a customer’s brand – not just the part you’re working on – you have more opportunities to upsell and add more products to a sale.
Avoiding Mistakes
It can be intimidating joining the promo space, and distributors naturally want to get things as right as possible on first go.
One thing that Goldberg recommended is to get products and materials in front of your client as soon as possible to make sure they like it. You may execute the promo flawlessly, but it still might not be perfectly to their liking. Maybe they want a different feel to a T-shirt or a different size water bottle, and if you wait until close to the deadline, you’re out of luck.
On top of that, Zezzo advised that distributors should never underprice or try to sell based on price alone.
“Don’t win on price,” he said. “I’m telling you. I’m warning you. This will bite you bad.”
Zezzo expanded on the scenario Goldberg created, where an order is completed and the customer doesn’t feel that it’s what the campaign calls for. If you don’t maintain margins, replacing all of those products could be ruinous.
O’Reilly said that the distributor also needs to consider who the buyer at the company is, in addition to the end-users. Often, the panel agreed, the buyers buy what they like, not necessarily what the end-user likes.
“Decision-makers for businesses are getting younger, so you need to be in tune,” O’Reilly said. “Do a little generational homework and talk product to that buyer.”
This can include wanting super-personalized print on demand or working through an e-commerce platform.
Chaos & Creativity
Chasing promo sales can feel like opening Pandora’s (branded, personalized) box for some print sellers, but the limitlessness of the possibilities is also what makes it so rewarding – in addition to the added revenue. There’s an emotional aspect to buying promo that isn’t there all the time for items like business forms or envelopes, Goldberg said. It’s also often easier to quote pricing, Zezzo said, where print sometimes can be a headache due to lack of SKUs or standardized products.
“It’s exciting,” O’Reilly said. “Brochures and mail aren’t always exciting, but promo is exciting. People want to have that conversation.”
