The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

What are the best examples of USB promotional products and how can they be used? In a word or three: USB Flash Drives or flashdrives or Memory Sticks as they are sometimes known. What makes these promotional products so special is the fact that they are extremely popular. Find one computer user, especially someone in sales, marketing or IT who does not have at least one USB flash drive. This is the beauty about this type of product, it gets used, it gets seen and provides a really great platform for your marketing and promotional message. At Redbows we have several hundred types of flashdrive available. These include plastic, metal, wooden and leather-cased. Typical order quantities can range from as low as 50 pieces with sizes up to several GigaBytes (GB). There are also ECO environmentally friendly flashdrive alternatives with cases made from recycled plastics, sustainably managed forests (in the case of wooden cases) and plants such as bamboo.  The most common uses of such USB promotional products includes: promoting a website, as incentives for competitions, rewards and general promotion. What we like best about these products is in addition to offering a great imprint area and branding options (screen printing, embossing and laser engraving), USB flashdrives can also be supplied pre-loaded with valuable data. This could include branded datasheets and manuals or conference and exhitions presentations, top tips, reasons to buy, common FAQs and other such material. Accessories for this range are also quite extensive. Gift boxes are commonly used to make them more personalised and these can include lanyards, keyrings and other such materials. Even with a fluctuating Dollar-to-Sterling exchange rate flashdrives and memory sticks are still firm favourites when it comes to USB products for promotions.

Promotion flashdrives or memory sticks continue to be one of the most popular promotional gadgets and gifts available. Their appeal has largely grown because the price of computer chip memory has fallen rapidly over the years to allow the purchase of relatively large sizes (1GB for example) for a reasonable price. Also USB flashdrives are available in a range of materials including wooden, leather, metal and plastic cases all of which can take a suitable imprint whether via screen printing, embossing or engraving. A really useful idea is to have your flashdrives delivered with pre-loaded data. Examples can include data sheets and company presentations. This make distribution of the material really easy at shows, exhibitions and seminars and means that your clients also get great digital content to use on their websites and databanks. Off course you can go a little further with memory sticks in terms of packing. Whilst the most economic packaging is off course ‘bulk packed’ in bubble wrap most promotional gifts suppliers can supply cases, tins or cardboard boxes containing the flashdrives, and perhaps a keychain toggle or lanyard, and other associated peripherals. So remember, if you are looking for a really useful promotional gadget that your clients will probably use every day then USB memory sticks could be just the gift for you.

Ok, so as we approach the Christmas Party season one of the most popular promotional gifts (that we can talk about without blushing) is the disposable camera. Even with most people having their own mobile phone cameras these days we find that our disposable cameras are a big hit around the Christmas period.

So what makes these gifts so popular. Well most people love to have a camera for the office party and few want to risk taking along their own digital cameras for obvious reasons. They primary reason for the buyer though is that these gifts have an outer card sleave that can be fully customised with a big ‘thank you, have fun’ type message or something more corporate. Being pocket sized the cameras can be supplied in a personalised party bag along with other appropriate gifts. We can also arrange for printing afterwards. A neat idea for anyone looking for something different for their Christmas Dinner Parties.

Well no but the prices are. We are often asked why we change our flashdrive and MP3 player prices so often. The answer is that two variables govern the pricing of memory-based products: the US$ exchange rate and memory chip availability. For example, at the moment there is a shortage of 256Mb chips and this is having a knock on effect on other sizes that use combinations of these.

So issuing price lists for these items can be a nightmare. We tend to take a ‘swings and roundabouts’ approach to minor fluctuations but occasionally a client may see a much larger change. For this reason we work on a short validity on usb flashdrive prices and quotes, and prices can literally vary within 48 hours. The best thing we can advise clients is to use the prices as a budgetary guide if they are not ready to order then and there, and to always check for the latest prices. Sometimes, even in this mad world they fall further than a previous week’s rise.