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.
My Two Cents
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.
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