Category: Help & Advice

I’ve been looking lately for a more secure and reliable place to store all our artwork files and customer documents.  We have for so long had a shared network drive with an ever increasing list of client folders in.

I wanted to have this backed up so that we could never lose the data.

You can easily setup a google drive account for free if you have a google account.  If you have gmail or use any of google’s other services then you already have an account you can use for google drive.

You initially get a free 5GB drive space which to be fair will serve the average user more than adequately.  We have upgraded to a 200GB drive space to backup all of our client artwork.

I’ve put together a step by step guide to setting up google drive and sharing a file or folder with us…

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One of the most effective ways to raise funds as a charity is to sell items – whether its second hand donated items or promotional merchandise, but the thought of a shop leaves many charities thinking its just not worth it – all the costs associated with a shop such as overheads, staffing and keeping a regular stock will mean for some charities its just not worth the hassle.

Ebay cuts this problem out and lets you sell as much or as little as you want online.

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Below we have started to build a great collection of Fundraising Ideas.

We are building on this all the time and welcome any additional ideas to be posted in the comments below.

You are welcome to use any of the cartoons/pictures in this post for your own blogs as we had them especially commissioned. 


 Girl Running a Race1 – Run a Marathon

Getting sponsored to run a marathon is one of the top ways to raise money for the charity or cause you support.

You can use a service like “Just Giving” to make it easy for friends, family or work colleagues to sponsor you.

Why not dress up as something weird to get into the Guinness book of records? Or… maybe carry a fridge all 26 miles?

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Laser engraving uses lasers to mark or engrave objects. It is a very exact process and can be very technical. Often, the process requires a computer. The computer system would be used to drive the laser head.How Does Laser Engraving Work?

Most laser engraving work is done by a laser engraving machine. The machine has a laser, surface and a controller.

There are three types of engraving machines.

The most commonly used one is the X-Y table. This table is stationary and the laser moves in an X and Y fashion to do the drawing. Sometimes, there are exceptions. Then the engraving machine is used specifically for odd-shaped surfaces, in the promotional products world there are many odd shaped branded items!

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Over the years I’ve found a few amazingly useful resources and methods that help me to create decent artwork from jpgs word documents and even scans of business cards.  If your a designer like me then you will know how bad artwork you receive can sometimes be. I remember a great cartoon from Digital Arts Magazine that depicted a boss asking his designer to photoshop a 1x1pixel logo into a logo.  It’s never been that bad from me but it’s been close.

Anyway I have compiled a logo redraw cheatsheet for you to use as a good reference point.


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What are Origination Costs?

We get asked this one all the time so I thought I would go into finer detail about what origination costs are.  We don’t charge directly charge any of our clients origination fees or setup costs.  We prefer to give you the final unit cost of your products to save any confusion.  We do however have to pay setup/origination fees to our factories/printers when we print your job.  Therefore the charges do relate to your final unit cost from us…

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Price Match Plus 5% Discount

As a Merchandise Distributor we have access to the same UK Promotional Products Suppliers as every other UK Distributor.  However we also source a lot of our products and some larger orders direct from the far east, we have strong connections with many factories for popular items such as lanyards, wristbands and USB flash drives.

We will always get 3-5 separate quotes on each product you have requested, this is to secure you the best prices for your wholesale order.

If you have a cheaper quote than the one we have supplied, generally we will be able to price match and then discount by at least 5%

We have a huge supplier network and can usually find a better price for you. We offer a high quality sourcing service, and we are always aware that price may be a clients No1 Priority.

We may however decline to price match a quote, if we have concerns that we will not be able to supply a high enough level of quality on a product.

For instance: on flash drives we “can” supply upto 5 different grades of memory chip…

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What are Spot Colours and What is Process?

On our site we use the abbreviated:

  • 1 Col = 1 Spot Colour
  • 2 Col = 2 Spot Colours
  • 3 Col = 3 Spot Colours
  • 4 Col = 4 Spot Colours
  • Process = 4 Colour Process (or Digital Printing)

We use these mainly to save space on the screen.  But it goes without saying they might need some explaining.

When printing on promotional products the cost is usually based on how many colours you want to print.  This is because each colour is separately printed and the product has to go through the print process once for each different colour.

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How Does Screen Printing Work?

How Does Screen Printing Work?Silk screen printing is a process that dates back as far as the Song Dynasty in China (960-1279 AD). It is called silkscreening because in the 1960’s printers used silk as the ‘mesh’ which the ink came through before being transferred onto the material.

Silk screen printing has retained the name even though polyester is now primarily used instead of silk as the mesh screen. It is also known as screen printing or serigraphy. Screen printing is used for printing on various promotional products.

Some popular promotional items for screen printing are:

The process of silk screen printing consists of several steps…

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