Fresh Beginnings

My thoughts on The PPAI Expo and what's new at Promo Marketing, plus the only transition from promotional products to classic Eddie Murphy in the entire blogosphere.

With the first day of exhibits at The PPAI Expo in Las Vegas over, attendees and exhibitors alike are assessing the show and the impact it will have on their businesses. Promo Marketing sat down with a number of suppliers and distributors to get their first impressions from the show floor.

This past April, The New York Times reported Americans gave away a whopping $229 billion in charitable donations in 2008. In that same year, the March/April issue of The American reported that the number of dollars given in the U.S. far surpassed the volume donated by any other nation on the planet. While it may surprise you, we are a nation that volunteers time and gives money to charity.

BLAME IT ON simple biology—humans just can’t get by without food. As the building blocks of life, nutrients are intrinsic to the survival of every individual. But these facts are common knowledge. What nutrients can do for the life expectancy of a marketing campaign, however, now that’s something to chew on. When promotional products are gracing the table, end-users are getting their daily recommended allowance of brand messaging in an easy-to-swallow format. By extension, a company gets much-coveted visibility, not to mention greater probability of retention. The simple health benefits of three squares a day? That’s science. The marketing possibilities associated with each

Valdosta, Georgia-based Fresh Beginnings received national certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise by the Georgia Women’s Business Council (GWBC), Atlanta, Georgia, a regional certifying partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) headquartered in Washington. This recognition as a minority-owned business was awarded following a comprehensive application and certification process. Fresh Beginnings is a top supplier of gourmet food gifts in the promotional products industry. For more than twenty years, Fresh Beginnings has been baking gourmet cookies and handmaking custom chocolate candies. “We are excited about what this certification means to our company. This certification puts us in a unique position for

I recently had to apologize to a friend that lives, oh, some 80,000 miles away ... in the West African country of Coté d’Ivoire, to be exact. He’d (I figured you’d want to know who it was) done something I thought was unjust ... and well, I let him have it (via e-mail, of course). However, after having had a week or so to reflect on my response to my Ivorian friend’s unjust deed, I sent him yet another e-mail—this time, expressing my sorrow for the things I’d previously written. Thankfully, he accepted my apology, and in his best “Frenglish,” wrote back: “Today is

I think the only word that comes to mind after attending this years’ PPAI show in Las Vegas is “Wow!” Never before have I seen such a—what’s the right word—menagerie. It was good to finally put a few faces to the e-mails, and probably even more so, it was nice meeting new people with innovative products. I think I speak for many of my coworkers when I send out a big thank you to the wonderful women at the Fresh Beginnings for providing us with what seemed to be an unending stream of cookies. And, while I’d like to admit

Holiday products from Fresh Beginnings