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Wednesday
August 12, 2009 Who’s on the HOT List?Filed under: Community, Industry Initiatives, Members, News About ASI
Our magazine’s editors survey the scene and showcase the hottest people and products in the industry, and this year’s issue is no exception. You’ll discover some surprises among the 40 names on the HOT people list. Are you on it? To find out, click here. It never fails to amaze me just how innovative this industry is, which is reflected in the “Objects of Hotness” section, featuring dozens of great products to sell to clients. There’s everything from a biodegradable first aid kit and basketball-shaped foam hat to poolside saddle tote bags and an iPod speaker bag with a carabiner. For the complete montage of the products, click here. If that wasn’t enough, Counselor also reports on key business trends affecting how ad specialty companies are moving forward in today’s marketplace. For instance, did you know green is the new black? Hot people and products, valuable strategies and intriguing ideas. It’s all in the issue. Also, we hope to see you in Las Vegas at the HOT Party on Wednesday, September 16, at the Christian Audigier Nightclub in Treasure Island. It’ll be a celebration of all things hot and will be happening during the new ASI Holiday & Incentives Expo. Tell me what or who you think is hot – or even what we may have missed – by posting a comment now or emailing me here.
Monday
August 10, 2009 The Gift Book – Get More Profit NowFiled under: Members, News About ASI
When it comes to gift buying, that money is in the prime fourth-quarter selling season, when more industry sales occur than any other period. It’s the time of year when buyers are searching for quality incentive items and products for corporate gift-giving programs and the best place to look for those is in The Gift Book. Launched today, this elegant catalog features over 400 products from exclusive suppliers and is a proven selling tool that helps distributors drive those crucial fourth-quarter sales – your last major drive for extra profit this year. It’s clear to me companies should do everything they can to reinforce their relationships with their customers and what better way than to thank them with an unforgettable gift? Now is a great time to get a slice of next year’s promotional budget by presenting items from this catalog that create a positive impression and never go out of style. As a special offer, distributors ordering The Gift Book will also receive an e-Gift Book electronic catalog, accessible directly from their LogoMall website, to use as a follow-up tool in emails to customers and prospects. The e-Gift Book features the classy brown and tan cover pictured above – one of the two covers available for the print edition. To order The Gift Book online, click here. For more information, contact Dan Brown, director of distributor services, at dbrown@asicentral.com. I’d love to hear about your experiences with The Gift Book, so post a comment now or email me here.
Tuesday
August 4, 2009 Awards From Suppliers – A Closer LookFiled under: ASI Shows, Industry Initiatives, Members Any time we present awards at an industry event like the recent black-tie Counselor Awards at ASI Show Chicago, we spend a lot of time working with the supplier designing the awards – since the pieces are treasured by recipients for a long time to come. This year we had the pleasure of working with the pros at Crystal D (asi/47759), whose slogan is “We exist to turn emotions into memories.” Chuck Dahlgren, president, and Angela Wurst, marketing coordinator, stood by their motto throughout the process of selecting the right awards to reflect the industry’s best and brightest talent. I believe we don’t highlight our own industry’s unique products enough, so here’s an up-close photo of the Person of the Year award. Also, a photo with me and Bonni Shevin-Sandy, president of Dard Products (asi/48500), holding her International Person of the Year award.
Crystal D offers more than 1,000 awards and plaques, along with eight imprint methods, so the decision-making process was thorough and allowed us to customize our awards to intricately represent the caliber of individuals and firms receiving them. In addition to Crystal D, other Counselor Awards sponsors this year were Anvil (asi/36350), Mars Direct (asi/68888) and The Corvest Family – Toppers (asi/91530), Adva-Lite (asi/32145) and It’s All Greek To Me (asi/62960). To see photos from the awards ceremony – including winners holding the Top 40 awards – click here.
Wednesday
July 22, 2009 Counselor Awards Honors Distributor SalespeopleFiled under: ASI Shows, Members, News About ASI Every year I stand on stage at a fabulous venue during an ASI Show and look out on a black-tie crowd ready for our annual Counselor Awards and I feel exactly the same way: thrilled. The awards recognize the best and the brightest in our industry – the outstanding individuals and companies really making their mark.Which is why in choosing the highly-anticipated Person of the Year award we made an extraordinary decision in a nod to a more challenging year: rather than select just one individual, why not honor a group of individuals that’s having the biggest impact in these times? Those people are our distributor salespeople and our 2009 Person of the Year is “The Distributor Salesperson” – every blockbuster distributor rep at every distributorship in our industry. Distributor salespeople are making the most significant impact on the market by approaching business in a unique way in these challenging economic times and we highlighted these ten qualities at the ceremony that successful reps exemplify in their work everyday: tenacious, sincere, charismatic, passionate, resilient, empathetic, consultative, creative, organized and loyal. The other big winners of the 2009 Counselor Awards are:
We also revealed the Top 40 Distributors and Top 40 Suppliers rankings – the largest companies in the industry based upon 2008 revenue. And the Counselor Product Design Awards winners were recognized for their innovations in cutting-edge product design and functionality. To see more photos from the awards event, visit asicentral.com/counselorawards. To view the complete Top 40 Distributors and Top 40 Suppliers rankings, visit www.stateoftheindustry.com.
Wednesday
July 15, 2009 Remembering Lenore GoldbergFiled under: Community, Members There are many wonderful people in this industry, but Lenore Goldberg was a very special one. This week, I join her family, friends and colleagues in mourning her passing. I met Lenore nearly four years ago, during a continuing series of discussions between SAAGNY and ASI. She was president of SAAGNY, and we quickly established a trusting relationship that meant a lot to me and, I think, to her. While we didn’t always see eye to eye, we never hesitated to pick up the phone and call each other to air our concerns, listen to other viewpoints and then resolve whatever was in the mix at the moment. When I last saw her, Lenore and I discussed life and how it sometimes seems so short — I had just lost my father — and we hugged and shared how pleased we had been to have met. Lenore, of Premiums Plus Inc. (asi/299013), located in Fort Lee, N.J., served SAAGNY in basically every role after she was elected to the board in 2000. She was director, secretary, treasurer, vice president, president-elect and president. In the formal announcement of her passing, Jonathan Riegel, president of SAAGNY, said that “Lenore set the standard for leadership and we will continue to strive to maintain that level of integrity and fair-mindedness.” I couldn’t have said it better. She was warm, straightforward, competitive and caring. In a world that sometimes seems to have too many fakes and too much fiction, Lenore was a striking example of fresh honesty wrapped inside a real charmer. She’s the kind of person you’d have as a neighbor, if you were really lucky. Lenore was a strong supporter of The SAAGNY Foundation and its many charitable events and programs and served as a Foundation Trustee. An avid golfer, Lenore was especially proud of her three holes-in-one and was the recipient of several outstanding golfer awards. The SAAGNY Foundation will be naming their annual golf outing in her memory. Donations in Lenore’s name may be made by mail to: The Melanoma Research Foundation, 170 Township Line Road, Building B, Hillsborough, NJ 08844. Acknowledgement to be sent to: Stanley Goldberg, 4 Horizon Road, St. G2, Fort Lee, NJ 07024, or through www.melanoma.org.
Wednesday
July 8, 2009 New Features for ESP Online – Better Catalog Search and P.O. ToolFiled under: Member Benefits, Members, News About ASI
New features include: • Catalog Searching – Distributors can search for items found in the latest editions of Spectrum, Select and Gift Book catalogs on the ESP home page. • Improved Decorator Search – Distributors can search for decorators based on embellishment type and by distance-radius from any local zip code. • Enhanced Client Projects Center – Distributors’ clients are now accessible by name through an A-to-Z clickable list, and client projects can now quickly be searched by type of item. • Updated Purchase Order Tool – ASI’s industry standard purchase order now automatically fills in the net cost, based on the quantity being ordered, reducing errors. • Safety Notices – Active consumer product safety warnings are now displayed in the “additional information” area. For more in the press release, click here. In addition, many of ESP Online’s 32,000 users continue to participate in the exclusive ASI Supplier Ratings System, allowing distributors to rate their experience with a supplier among six categories using a five-star scale. Users can also view how many distributors have rated a supplier, similar to Amazon.com. If that weren’t enough, you won’t find higher quality images anywhere else in the industry. Almost all of them have white backgrounds and they’re all high resolution, and you can also change images and showcase them to clients as virtual samples. And, don’t forget, in the PromoCafe, ESP users can chat with other members of the ESP Online community instantly. There are multiple chat rooms for discussing a variety of topics and users can also send instant messages and can create buddy lists to maintain frequent contacts. For a free demo, visit www.asicentral.com/esp, and post a comment on the blog now about your experience using ESP to grow your business. Also, for videos of ad specialties for your clients, visit my YouTube channel here.
Tuesday
June 23, 2009 What’s Your Question 35?Filed under: Community, Industry Initiatives, Members Let me admit something right off the bat – I’m not under 35. However, I was more than happy to answer some questions for the new Facebook group “Promo 35,” which provides an online forum for young industry professionals. The group is the brainchild of Charley Johnson of SnugZ/USA (asi/88060), who is posting several interviews with industry leaders and movers and shakers. The interviews have thought-provoking questions, such as “what do you wish you knew back in your 20s that you know now?” or “what piece of advice would you give the younger generation hoping to be in your shoes later in life?” Read my answers here if you’re on Facebook. If not, they’re below. The last question, #35, is crafted by the interviewees. What would your question be? Post it on the blog now or email me here. 1. What do you wish you knew back in your 20’s that you know now? Early in my career, I thought every decision – no matter how small – was life or death, do or die, must win at all costs. What I’ve discovered is that you pick your battles, and you pick when you must win and when you just want to win, and you save your ammunition for the times that you really need to unload it. Many people think they have to win every debate, every business discussion, every last nickel on the table. That isn’t the case, and in fact in the long run you ultimately lose because everyone thinks you always have to have it your way. 2. What one thing do you wish you would have done in your earlier days? What one thing do you wish you would have NOT done in your earlier days? A. I wish that I had spent more time just out of college traveling and visiting the world and learning more about other cultures. I’ve been able to do that in the last few years, but I think that my personal and professional development would have been helped by having some of those experiences early on and not later. Of course, easy to say but tough to afford when you’re earlier in your career. (Although travel and experiencing the world doesn’t have to be expensive to be good.) B. I really don’t have any regrets. If you approach things that are difficult with an eye to learning from the experience, and taking that away with you, I think really you have few regrets. 3. What piece of advice would you give the younger generation hoping to be in your shoes later in life? Be honest. It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and acknowledge that you made them. The worst thing to find out is that someone isn’t honest, isn’t truthful and tries to cover up every little error in judgment they make. We make a hundred decisions in a day – sometimes hundreds of decisions in a day – and not every one of them are going to be the correct ones in the long term. But in the moment, you have to make the decision, and you have to do the best you can. 4. What helps you get up and go to work in the morning? I love what I do, and I love the people I do it with, both professionally and in my personal life. I long ago decided that working somewhere that I didn’t like, with people I didn’t respect, or spending time with friends who I didn’t really like that much, was a big waste of time. 5. Name a vice you have? I’m not sure it’s a vice, but one thing that I sometimes struggle with is tackling the biggest problems and biggest issues first. It’s natural for me to try to do the little stuff first, and get to the big, bad stuff later. But if you tackle the bigger, tougher things first you’re fresher, you have more energy and your brain is going to be more engaged. Plus it makes everything after that seem simpler. 6. What would you stand up for no matter how much backlash came with it? After really gathering the facts, and deciding what I think was right, I’d stand up for that position no matter what. 7. Is the customer really always right? Please no politically correct responses; we want your honest opinion. Absolutely not. But neither are we. One of the most important things in business is to really listen to the other parties and understand where they’re coming from, calmly explain your position and where you’re coming from and then trying to reach some sort of a middle ground that works pretty well for everybody. There’s nothing worse than people who call me yelling about something, or staking their ground and saying “you must do this or else.” We’ve all talked to those people, we’ve all gotten their letters and emails, and we’ve all met them. Sometimes you just have to say, “Is this really worth the effort I’m putting into this?” And if it isn’t, you have to walk away. One of the hardest things is “firing” a customer, but I certainly have done it and I certainly explain to people that I plan to do it. Usually, if they’re reasonable, they’ll calm down and realize that they’ve been too aggressive or just plain too mean. If they don’t, then I don’t want them as a customer, or as a prospect or as a friend. 8. What famous person has this world put up on a pedestal that you believe does not deserve to be there? Rather than an individual, I’d say a whole host of “famous” singers, performers and politicians. We sometimes idolize people for no good reason other than they’re doing their job. 9. If all of a sudden you had control over the entire promotional product industry what ONE thing would you change? I would try to take away some of the paranoia that exists among and between distributors, suppliers and decorators. There’s a lot of unproductive worry about relationships, and I think in the long run it hurts the industry more than it helps any one business individually or the industry as a whole. 35. Your turn to ask a question, you can ask any question you want, something you want the readers to think about and answer for themselves. If you could do anything, knowing that you wouldn’t fail, what would you do? |
