Whether you are selling to a global brand like Nike or to your local YMCA, no single asset is more valuable to your client than the client's good name.
Rick Brenner
Sell your client a promotional product that enhances their brand and you're likely to have a happy customer for a long time. Sell a product that embarrasses the brand and the cost for everyone involved could be astronomical.
There aren't many distributors who would describe themselves as manufacturers. But under CPSIA, the majority of promotional products distributors—at least those who buy blank apparel from a wholesaler and then send it out to have it decorated—are just that.
If you import children's toys, or if you're a promotional products supplier with children's toys in your line, effective tomorrow you'll need to comply with an update to the mandatory Federal Toy Safety Standard.
In the four years since the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was signed into law, the promotional products industry has struggled mightily to figure out how to apply it to what we do every day. Nothing has come easily. Perhaps because most promotional products don't start out as children's products and perhaps because the "toys" we sell are mostly for adults, there always seems to be a "yes, but" when we try to understand CPSIA in the context of the world we live in.
You get a call one morning from a marketing manager referred to you by one of your customers. She desperately needs 7,500 tote bags for an event the following week and wants to know if you can deliver.
If attendance at ICPHSO's 2012 Annual Meeting and Training Symposium is any indication, then the promotional products industry should feel proud of the strides it is making in product safety awareness.
Just for a moment, try to imagine that a promotional product you sold to your largest customer has suddenly become the subject of a government recall.
You sell a product to a Little League for distribution to 7-year-olds. Would your client expect the product to comply with Federal children's product standards?
With the deadline for mandatory third party lead testing less than two months away, now would be a very good time to take a closer look at the third-party test reports in your files.
I received a call last week from a distributor concerned about an order she had recently shipped through an industry supplier for a children's event.
Of all the costs that go into making a promotional product, quality costs are often the hardest to appreciate.
Raise your hand if you like negative campaign ads. No hands? I'm not surprised.
I know, I know. Boring technical jargon. It's all true. But unless you have someone else in your company to take care of this for you, you can't afford not to know how to read a test report.
Think you know a toy when you see one? We should soon find out if the Consumer Product Safety Commission agrees with you.
