AIA Corporation announced that St. Louis-based Universal Creative Concepts (UCC) has joined its community of nearly 300 independent distributors. This is the third new distributor to join AIA in 2020. With more than 31 years in the promotional products industry, UCC prides itself on providing personal service and going the extra mile to…
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The sports world still hasn’t fully recovered from the Jan. 26 death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others in a California helicopter crash. Yesterday, 29 days since the tragedy, the Los Angeles Lakers held a memorial service where attendees received T-shirts, pins and other commemorative items…
Read MoreJif Peanut Butter and Giphy have teamed up to solve the “gif” versus “jif” by creating two labels for Jif peanut butter. One says “Jif” and one says “Gif.” Actually, it seems like they’re just making the whole thing more complicated. Honestly, we’re surprised it took both parties this long to think of this. This seems like something…
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Quality Certification Alliance, Chicago, has awarded QCA Accreditation to Foamworx, Calais, Maine. QCA Accredited companies endorse a self-certification, complete a rigorous self-assessment, and then submit their headquarters and their supply base to multiple third-party audits. The QCA board uses a scorecard representing the performance of the applicant and its supply chain on the third-party audits…
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Since 1962’s “Dr. No,” James Bond has been the embodiment of cool. So, for the 25th film in the franchise, it’s fitting that an attractive promotional product would look to draw attention to that legacy. One might not have necessarily expected for that item to be sneakers, but the promotional item could very well make sense…
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Royal Apparel, Hauppage, N.Y., announced that it will maintain its 2019 prices through June 30, 2020. Even though raw material costs have increased, the company has implemented a new ERP system and upgraded its cutting facility, which has improved efficiencies.
Read MoreTo anyone who thinks promo items are nothing but “trinkets and trash,” may we refer you to the curators at the Smithsonian? They’re tracking down promotional items from the 2020 Presidential Election to document them as part of a long-running collection of American election merchandise…
Read MoreThere is a major problem in the promotional world. It’s one we’re too quick to ignore, too comfortable minimizing as part-of-the-biz, and one that is costing us money. That problem is professional isolation. You read industry publications, you’ve developed expertise that pays off, and you budget for trade shows—to meet your peers, to find good…
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Proforma, Cleveland, hosted a meeting last week for PromoStandards. “The Standards Committee is an important part of the continual advancement of technology within our industry,” said Brian Carothers, Proforma’s chief technology officer. “By collaborating with other distributors, suppliers and service providers, it defines what standards need to be updated or created to improve and simplify…
Read MoreDetroit-based promotional products distributor Tameria Heard already has a successful business in Corporate 52 Marketing Group, which includes big-name clients like the Detroit Tigers and Quicken Loans, but now she has something of a “pet project” on the side. It was Heard’s love of dogs, including her own, that influenced her to start Swaggles—a new…
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