Not All Microfiber is Created Equal! -or- How I learned to stop worrying about price and started learning how to love the product

Since Clothpromotions Plus introduced microfiber as an innovative marketing tool in 2007 (although we had been doing it since 1992) to the Promotional Product Industry, there has been an explosion of companies carrying microfiber products.

We firmly believe it a Supplier's responsibility to best educate our Distributors! As such we have realized that microfiber has somewhat of a mystique to it and we are here to help remove the smoke and mirrors with our:

Top 5 Strands of Information about Microfiber

1) Microfiber means "tiny fiber"   (Microfiber is in no way shape or form a type of material, it is an adjective)

2) Examples of microfibers are: Polyester, polypropylene, nylon, rayon, kevlar, Nomex, and more!

3) Microfiber materials last for many years, can be washed

4) There are as many types and combinations of microfiber as there are with organic fibers (cotton, bamboo, etc)

5) When shopping for microfiber products, one can and should NEVER look at price first. You should always look at material composition, weight, finish, imprint quality. (isn't your client worth the best? or at the least given the option?)

A client requesting microfiber cloths is extremely similar to a client requesting a shirt. You have some base questions: What is the budget? Do you want quality or do you want inexpensive? What types of materials do you like?

No one ever just "sells shirts" there is an enormous array of apparel styles, weights, materials and print capabilities. Now the logic part - if t-shirts are made of textile materials and there are dozens of combinations and microfiber products are made of textile materials - then there are dozens of combinations of microfiber!

Make sure when requesting samples of microfiber cleaning cloths you ask for the actual material that the finished product for the client will be on!! Avoid the bait and switch!!

We have always provided our distributors with the Best of the Best when it comes to both quality and price and give you the name brand Opper Fiber, a USA trademarked brand name. Clothpromotions Plus spends 12-18 hours a day thinking, processing, producing and perfecting Opper Fiber and microfiber products. It is literally all that we do.

Because it is what we do, we can offer the best brand name USA produced products as well as match inferior, cheaper materials at competitive prices. Again, it is what we do.

When you have the option for the most trusted source, the highest quality domestically produced source, the original marketing source, the universal source for all products microfiber at every price range...

How could anyone even consider going anywhere else?

Microfiber. It's what we do.

Why Opper Fiber® ?

The Promotional Product industry is HOT. Why, you ask? Think about it; what better way to show off a business or organization than by proudly displaying their logo or company message right on items that people use in their everyday life? These items include: pens, mugs, key chains, magnets, cup holders, apparel, and of course our very own microfiber cloth, Opper Fiber®. In fact, you probably even have a few next to you right now (if you do not, you should!).

Just about anything can be imprinted with a company's brand, but it takes a special kind of product to really hit home and be used by someone for a long time. It is important to choose an item with staying power; something that is memorable, long lasting and is easily adopted into a person’s daily routine.

Opper Fiber® is our product and should never be confused with just any microfiber cloth, especially not that old bifocal cleaner your granddad keeps stashed in his back pocket. Opper Fiber® stands for the highest quality products and service. Finished Opper Fiber® cloths are produced domestically and ensure that your product passes through our quality checks and each and every product comes with our guarantee. This guarantee is for our products and for our service.

We hear this everyday on the phones:

“My client wants something cheap.”

Our response:

“There is a difference between cheap and inexpensive.”

Your client does not want cheap, they want affordable!

At around a buck or less, Opper Fiber® is extremely affordable in price, but worth millions in practicality. Opper Fiber® cloths will be in a person’s pocket or purse 90% -100% of the day, will be used a minimum of 5-10 times per day and will last for 1-2 years or more! Your client wants more brand exposure? Look no further! Every time someone pulls an Opper Fiber® cloth out of their bag, they are exposing the brand's name to themselves and that brand message to everyone around them. This universal product can (and will) be used by any demographic for any item that can smudge: mobile devices, glasses, computers, laptops, camera lens, TV screens, jewelry... You name it, we clean it!

Distributor Spotlight: "The Journey is the Reward"

We always meet wonderful and interesting people at our trade shows and on the phone. Getting to know our distributors and developing personal relationships is paramount in our business practice.

Doug LaViolette and his family, I am proud to spotlight in this posting. I first met Doug over a year ago. We spoke on the phone at great length, as we discovered similarities in our business practices, community activities, dedication to our families and desire to succeed in business through building relationships and friendships. Doug is principal of the LaViolette Group based in Wisconsin. He is a military veteran, is extremely kind, has great business sense and relationships, and operates an inspiring non-profit organization called The Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation.

I truly cannot say enough about Doug. He has emotionally touched myself, my family and our company. His sincerity, thoughtfulness, industriousness packaged under a pleasant soft-spoken demeanor had made him instantly likable.

I could carry on all day about the projects and ideas and unique relationships Doug has in the business world, where this special individual shines is through his charitable work. Doug, through a family adversity, channeled his energy and resources to create a foundation named in honor of his son Brian. To quote the Foundation's website (http://www.briansjourney.com) : "Since 1992, the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation has presented more than 450 scholarships to deserving college-bound students in Northeastern Wisconsin, the United States, and other parts of the world". The Scholarship of Honor is presented to deserving high school seniors in pursuit of a career in the military, community or public service.

If the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation stopped operating today simply based on the laurels of presenting education scholarships thus far - it would be incredible, this Foundation does much more and is only growing in scope and attention. The Foundation honors fallen military veterans through presenting scholarships in their name, exposing their stories, inspires the community and demonstrates the resilience and good we as people are capable of.

Doug's family, their dedication and their story is what truly defines this foundation. The LaViolette family operates the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation. His wife Renee and daughter Kim manage the Foundation. To truly understand this Foundation and this remarkable family, I direct you to read Brian's Story on the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation's website. Doug once told me how his son Brian continues to impact and influence his life; the journey his life has taken and the people he has assisted and the people he has met along the way
are certainly the reward.

I hope this may in some way honor Doug and his family the way they honor and recognize so many others.

If you would like more information on this Foundation or Doug, please click on the link Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation.

"The Journey is the Reward" - Brian LaViolette

My dashboard brings all the sales to the yard, thats right it's better than yours

We have been using a web based leads management program simply called "dashboard." It is by LeadLog. Over the course of the past several months, it has been fully integrated with our sales and customer service. Thankfully, we offer a superior product with super service (gloat) and receive many inquiries and quote requests for minimum orders to large orders. That, added to the great contacts we make at face-to-face meetings at trade shows has given us quite a bit of information to keep track of. We decided to use a, relatively speaking, new lead management program (think facebook of lead management).

I am addressing this as a post: 1) I have not posted in quite a while and felt frisky and 2) because we think its a neat program and deserves a lil' buzz. We have worked with the dashboard folks to be able to upload our leads and populate our dashboard account and also learned how to add and categorize new leads. Regardless, if you are on the sales side, supply side, distributor side or retail side - it seems to work on all levels as opposed to very expensive, bulky, older and what we think as a bit confusing CRM (customer relationship management) software. And we can access it on the road on laptops and mobile devices at anytime. We are hoping for a chat update to be able to instant message while on dashboard too.

We learned to use dashboard tags to identify accounts and then sub-tag individual lead contacts under that main account. It helps organize an account, especially if there may be more than one sales person working with different divisions in a large company. It works great so far, the only manual effort I have personally found is entering the contact information or notes, the rest is just clicks. Normally, we just keep it up all day in our web browser and enter the information as a phone call or email comes in and share it with the team. The biggest assistance is not losing leads! Admittedly, it is sometimes hard to remember or manage business cards and special requests or conversations that may have occurred weeks ago. I suppose there is an apology in there to anyone (I hope there are very few if any) that may have "slipped through the cracks," I hope this finds you well and know we are taking every effort to correct this by using new technology to manage every call, email, conversation and request!!

With due diligence and an easy customer management system at our fingertips, we have all but eliminated this. We believe we are on the same side and team with all of our terrific distributors and firmly believe in keeping our relationships open to further our mutual goal of building business with each other and assisting businesses that we cater to, grow and thrive.

I would encourage not only those on our team within our office, but those who are on our team outside of our company, our distributors, in utilizing dashboard as well, to assist in managing their own business leads. I hope that anyone who is aware of our practices in customer service, resolution and prompt service will trust in our promotion of dashboard.

The ideal program for any sales based business (which is every business, I believe, by definition) will be simple, customizable and limitless in application. I believe that any salesperson, working for themselves or for a company, will feel autonomous and entrepreneurial when able to use technology that caters to their specific needs while encompassing the basics of pre-sales lead management. On a side note, its also a great database for keeping contact names, numbers and email addresses to pull up in a flash - rather than shuffling oodles of papers with scribble to find that phone number you wrote down a few days ago. I anticipate the ongoing updates of dashboard and appreciate the quick responses from them when requiring the occasional tutoring to customize the program to our own needs. (usually it is stuff we could have worked out ourselves with a modicum of patience)

As a company, more leads do not necessarily mean better business. It does mean that each and every individual potential business partnership is valuable when given the time and attention they dually deserve. You do not want a single one to "slip through the cracks."

www.getdashboard.com

Pieces of Us

We rarely, if ever, publish a blog or information that is completely self-serving. This is not part of our belief or practice as a business - we believe our success is built upon the success of those we work with and interact with on a daily basis.

Since we began tweeting five weeks ago, we have rapidly grown in our following through Twitter, and appreciate every single one. Our business practice has always been to reach out and assist those selling our products, using our products or developing creative solutions that have nothing to do with our products.

Our main product is a service, supporting our business associates and communities in building and developing their brand and generating interest and income through the promotional product industry.

We are able to do this through awareness and mindfulness of the industries we work in, monitoring trends, listening to our clients, listening to our employees, treating customers with respect, being humanistic, offering a level of transparency through social media and of course, laughter.

We are able to behave in this manner for several reasons. Clothpromotions Plus is a family owned company that treats all of employees with dignity and respect and maintains a culture of family through each and every position within our company. We believe in a lateral hierarchy. Each and every employment position is equally important. Without the sales department - there is no business, without the production department - the sales people have nothing to sell, without the operations people - the production and sales people would have no guidelines or procedures, without the cleaning staff - no one would have a pleasant work environment.

A vertical hierarchy is where the porter answers to the desk staff, the desk staff answer to the administrator who answers to the manager who answers to the area supervisor who answers to the vice president who answers to the COO. We certainly understand and follow a certain "pecking order," yet no employee is fixated on titles and everyone understands that their productivity impacts everyone else. This respect our employees share for each other allows us to convey this to our clients and business associates.

The backgrounds of our founders and operations people is diverse and knowledgeable in many areas. We have backgrounds in business, sales, branding, government, non-profit, health care, technology and psychology. Decades of combined education and experience intermingle daily.

I post, write and monitor this blog. After graduate school, I worked in mental health. With almost 10 years in the almost every facet of the psychiatric field, direct practice, fund raising and health administration world - I took my skills and background to the marketing and advertising world. Much of marketing is based in human psychology and sociological trends. It has been my training and career to monitor those trends and observe human behavior. I discuss this to not tout my experience or career history, but to validate our place in the advertising and promotional products realm.

We use educated and measured means to listen to the needs of our industry and to provide individual and mass information back. If this results in any growth and success of our distributors or their clients then we feel proud and accomplished. If this results in our own growth and success as a company, than we have more than done our job.

As a company, we incorporate advertising, technology, business and psychology backgrounds - as human beings, we incorporate communication, relationship building, listening and responding.

As you read our blogs, you will see how we incorporate our marriage of backgrounds. We will never posit ourselves as a company that simply believes we know what our customers want; we will be a company that is progressive in meeting the needs and wants of a growing customer base that demands individualized attention and knowledge of our market.

Clear vision with Clothpromotions.

Do Not Begin Your Day Until You Read This

On Time, Perception and Being Present

Two businessmen, each en route to important business meetings, have left their houses. Two business men walking down the sidewalk in early morning New York City. Each man wearing identical, brand new, Barney's suits, new leather shoes and a leather briefcase. Both men briskly walking to make it to their important business meetings as the sky opens up and begins to pour rain all over them.

In the rush to leave the house, neither man checked the weather nor took an umbrella with them. Now they are getting drenched, with 20 minutes to reach their appointments, no time to go back and change, and completely getting soaked in the middle of the sidewalk with no businesses or overhangs to gain cover. Barney's suits, leather shoes and leather briefcases getting ruined.

Eventually, one man's face turns bright red and is trying to hail any taxi going by or run into any business. He raises his fists to the heavens and begins to curse the rain, the clouds and God himself! He is furious and justly so. Perhaps more furious for not being prepared, although it may take a day to cool off and realize that.

The other man, also trying to hail a cab, looks up at the rain and smiles. He smiles, shakes his head, looks down at his watch and his clothes and thinks to himself, "well this is just swell." He begins to sing Singin' in the Rain to himself and jumps in a puddle.

Both men run into each other at the corner of the street, chasing the same taxi. They flag it down, nod in agreement to share and head off. To find they are going to the same place and in fact were meeting with each other.

Time, the suits, the taxicabs, the briefcases, the meeting place, the umbrella sitting next to their doors, and the rain itself - had no agenda to disrupt those particular businessmens' days. The rain did not choose who to fall on. Time did not choose to speed up or slow down for anyone. So what was the difference that lead one man to chuckle and sing and the other curse and fume?

Being present and perception.

As people we should take a moment daily, to step back and realize that we are only viewing the world through our own pair of eyes. We base our thoughts and feelings and reactions to a situation on our memories or our beliefs or predictions of the outcome. We rarely, as people, base our perception of a situation solely on what is exactly occurring as it occurs. Or being completely present and mindful.

Take moments to just smell the scents, touch the objects around you, realize their proximity to your body, listen to every sound around you, taste the food, inhale the air and look at the immediate surroundings in relation to your physical presence, right now.

Do not think about the time, what you must do tomorrow, what happened a week ago. Do not think about what you missed, or what you hope to accomplish. Do not focus on the demands upon you or wondering if you paid that bill. None of those things can be changed by your worry or thoughts or feelings alone.

Simply, take stock in the present and where you are and what you experience and what you see and what you can accomplish, right now. The issues you think about or worry about, will not leave if you stop concerning yourself with them.

The time you take to be present, will certainly assist you in being more mindful in accomplishing those tasks or correcting issues on your mind.

Clear vision with Clothpromotions.

The Market for Marketing

I was recently reminded in a business telephone conversation that distributors sell specific products to specific businesses. I use the term "reminded," as I had forgotten that a vast majority of distributors of advertising specialty products envision a specific client and the specific product match for that client. Our company follows a bit of a different philosophy than this concept. I do not believe our philosophy is unique, nor is it divergent from the majority of thinkers. However, a certain marketing idealism seems to vacate during these trying economic times or in settling with the idea that any order is a good order.

For your direct consideration:

Marketing Definition-

Management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer.

As a philosophy, it is based on thinking about the business in terms of customer needs and their satisfaction.

As a practice, it consists in coordination of four elements called 4P's: (1) identification, selection, and development of a product, (2) determination of its price, (3) selection of a distribution channel to reach the customer's place, and (4) development and implementation of a promotional strategy. Marketing differs from selling because (in the words of Harvard Business School's emeritus professor of marketing Theodore C. Levitt) "Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariably does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs."

(Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing.html)

There appear to be many Sellers in the distributor arena and far fewer Marketers.

Speaking directly as a company, Clothpromotions Plus (CPP) has invented itself through the expressed needs of a marketplace. Expressed needs indicating it is what the industry desires, whereas implied needs indicate what the Vendor imposes upon the industry in hopes they will desire.

CPP had researched the industry (industry defined as the entire product and service business world), and discovered something, EVERYONE WANTS THE SAME THING in a "marketing" product or campaign: Quality product, low cost, maximum value for exposure, usability, function, branding, high return on investment (ROI), universal appeal and usefulness. Most business marketers will certainly also tell you, an individual targeted marketing campaign is always more successful than throwing a wide net and hoping you catch something.

Sure, we could sell any imprintable item. We could SELL any imprintable item. We chose to market.

We use our product to brand ourselves, we use our product to give away at tradeshows, we use our product as our business card, we use our product daily on all the items it is useful for, we use our product to sell our product.

CPP is marketing a concept, that corporations, universities, non-profits, wholesalers, manufacturers, health care agencies, distributors and everyone that is in any type of business or service industry is seeking and expressing. Businesses desire and express needs for high ROI.

We are marketing a product that primarily functions as a marketing tool. Moreso, we market the idea that our product everyone in America and beyond can use multiple times a day (and actually will use), will remain in an individual's possession for over one year and up to ten years (the longest thus far we have seen), brands a company's name and message and exposes that brand to the user of the product multiple times a day, and is less than one dollar total cost of said product. Now divide $0.50 by 365 (days in a year) and then by 5 (average number of uses per day). Your answer should be $0.000274. This number indicates that each exposure will cost the company that uses this marketing item $0.000274.

That is what we market, the concept of using an advertising specialty item to MARKET an end user's brand, and result in a sales conversion.

My advice to distributor's is market to your clients, do not sell. Anyone can sell with enough moxie.

Meet the client's expressed needs, listen to your client, discover what they want to occur with spending their money and match them with the appropriate techniques and campaign to deliver a truly value added service. Assist your clients to assist their business. You will walk away a hero, every time.

Clear vision with Clothpromotions.
www.clothpromotions.com

Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists

Top 10 Lists capture our attention, are typically easy reads and are the cliffsnotes of online articles.

Even better than Top 10 Lists may be the "Five Reasons..." or "10 Best..." lists.

To keep with the purpose of this blog, here is your Top 10 Lists 10 points on experiencing the Top 10 list (have you been counting how many times I have typed the word "list" ?):

10. As you simply start reading, you already feel a sense of accomplishment, beginning your journey toward #1.

9. Breaking the #10 reason allows you to feel as if you are well on your way.

8. At this point you are seeking something more substantial, as you get closer to #1. And you will, because #8 is quite witty, if you think about it...

7. Usually a filler.

6. Reintroduces the concept that you are working down to more interesting reasons that a Top 10 list is valuable to your time.

5. Halfway there! Now the Top 10 List becomes a Top 5 List and 5 becomes the new 10. Usually the most self aware point in a Top 10 List.

4. Slap your own face! #4 Is usually quirkier than #1 even. At this point attention spans require a boost or a good punchline.

3. Final countdown. Lists that count down rather than up usually indicate that the #1 is the pinnacle of the list. When you count up from #1, they all seem equally important.

2. Holy smokes! Anticipation is more exciting than acquisition. At this point, being filled with the knowledge and cleverness of the past 7 points makes #2 the #1 tugger of emotions. The #2 point cannot outdo the #1 point in any list, yet it should lead on from the past 8.

1. People read Top 10 Lists because they offer quick, quirky points that keep people's interests and avoid the time needed to review an entire article or blog. #1 is the punchline of the entire list and usually is non sequitur.

Stay tuned for equally introspective lists to save you time!

File under Satire.

Clear vision with Clothpromotions.