Last week, at PROMOTIONS EAST, I attended a few education sessions. All of the sessions were valuable, but as the Promotional Fashionista, I felt most compelled by Decorated for Success Part 1 taught by Larry Mays, CAS, Boardwalk Marketing. Mays offered an in-depth exploration of every style of screen printing, every ink, every process and every possible mistake.
The most important lessons I learned from Mays that I think will benefit all distributors are as follows:
1. Distributors cannot sell the benefits of processes if they do not understand them.
2. High-quality printing beats low-priced printers on the internet.
3. Do not just sell solutions, sell commodity.
4. Flashing, or the process of underprint, is the difference between a muted print on a dark color and a vibrant, visible one.
5. A four-color process is rarely ever just four colors. Most of the time it is seven or more.
6. Memory-meet designs, such as red meat on a red shirt, sell well because consumers believe the image looks more real.
7. Distressed shirts comes in three styles: half-tone, chipped and aged.
8. Using 100 percent cotton, made-in-America shirts offers a distributor more control over the ink and print.
9. Prints like masking tape, leather and basketball are more expensive but have a higher impact.
In addition to attending sessions like Mays’ lecture on screen printing, I spoke with distributors to gauge their thoughts on the sessions. I’ve attached the video of one such conversation, when I spoke with Lucille Marchese, promotional consultant for Pennsylvania Promotions Inc. and Cindy Wolff, sales consultant for Ambassador Awards and Recognition Services.
