If you were from the outside looking in, the average promotional products client assumes that the promotional products distributor is some sort of jack of all trades.
I can imagine the client envisioning that there is giant warehouse stuffed with t-shirts, bags, mugs, giant foam hands in every color stacked in pallets to the ceiling.
Then you walk into the office and there you find a cubicle of sales people with head sets on processing orders on a nice flat screen and in the next room, and army of graphics designers recreating logos.
Not to mention automatic screen presses, embroidery machines, pad printers, and all sorts of logo affixing machinery that dumps finished product into boxes at shipping and receiving.
This must be a cavalcade and cacophony of trucks and fork lifts on its own!
This is not how it is.
The average promotional products distributor is a broker who is merely putting the deal together for a client that adds value for both parties involved. A project manager if you will.
If he or she is doing anything specific, it is making sure that the client is happy with the end product while making a margin high enough to sustain the enterprise over time.
Here is where Artwork Services has improved and streamlined my business.
I am not a graphic designer. Yet my clients think I am. I just merely forward my art to Danny and within hours it is done. Artwork Services competitive advantage is vectoring art and digitizing embroidery. I do not have to invest in this software or hire staff to run these tasks. This saves me money and improves my bottom line.
I am also not a screen printer. Yet my client thinks I am. I have a screen printer who takes the AWS artwork and burns the screens and performs the job.
Same thing with embroidery.
Heck, I do not even own merchandise until I have a signed purchase order in my hand. Then only, I own it for maximum of 2 weeks.
A distributor manages the project. He or she is successful if they are able to articulate and communicate the needs of the client within the specific expertise realm of the contractors within the value chain. For example, I explain everything intent of the client artwork wise to Danny and he then makes adjustments based on that data.
This is the future of business, being able to tap into global resources for maximum leverage.
