promotional products
Added on Jun, 23 2008 at 2:31 PM by Sarah
Recently, in the past few years, my aunt has opened a new business on her own. She has been talking about doing it for years, so she finally quit her high demanding job and decided to open a tiny stationary store. She has always loved art and is obsessed with stationary. Her shop is really cute and very successful now, but a few years ago she was begging to go back to her demanding job, almost giving up on her dream. She had a new business and no experience from this end (she was a doctor previously). She really had no idea what she was getting herself into when she quit her job. She had taken a few business classes in college and figured that since she had the money to do it, the rest would be a breeze. She went ahead and starting decorating and finding people to supply her with the merchandise as well as designing some of her own. Her store was extremely cute and a place that you felt you could spend hours in. It was a shame though because she didn't do very much advertising. So my cousin, who was a business and marketing major helped her out. He showed her how to advertise online and get her name out. They had fliers in local restaurants and in the newspapers. About a week or two later she finally had a steady flow of customers. Everyone loved her products, but my cousin decided that in order to keep those customers coming back, they had to come up with some sort of promotional products to give out to keep their name out there and in the minds of the customers. Since it was a stationary store, they decided that promotional items relevant to what they were selling and providing in the shop would make much more sense than giving out umbrellas or mouse pads. So they ended up with a few things. When buying stationary only (no pens or markers or ink of any kind), they got this really pretty pen to go with (that had the stores name on it). They also had ribbon with the stores initials and a free gift wrapping service. And for pens and pencils or writing utensils, they provided cases with the stores name. They were all really classy promotional gifts, not cheesy at all. This way the customer was satisfied with their service and kept her store in mind. To this day she still has the same loyal customers coming back, and of course new ones too!