Advantages of Buying Promotional Products Online Buying your promotional products and corporate apparel online provides five major advantages: a greater selection, better pricing, convenience, customer service, and faster ordering time.Manufacturers often display their entire line of products on
internet, providing you with a greater selection of products. With all of these manufacturers online, you gain opportunity to compare pricing and quality in a simple and accessible online format, instead of wasting time flipping through endless catalogs that crowd your workspace.
Better pricing is readily available online, but you have to search for it. Type any promotional product related keywords into your favorite search engine and sift through results until you find a company with discount pricing. Another great trick is to choose an item and have a few companies give you a quote with price of freight included. This will get you a number much closer to total cost.
How do these online companies afford to sell exact same product for less than other distributors? Traditionally, promotional items are sold by a distributor who has outside sales people that will go to your place of business, show you samples, and walk you through process of placing an order. These outside sales people are primary expense of an off-line distributor. This expense is then factored into price of promotional item, thus raising your total cost. When purchasing discount promotional products online, you can eliminate this huge cost and save considerable amounts of money.
Convenience comes with capability of placing your entire order online. All successful online companies offer this service with encrypted order forms to secure your purchasing information. It is always a necessary hassle to send artwork to your promotional products company. This is made easy with online form. With online ordering you gain convenience of placing your order anytime, twenty-four hours a day.
A few of these online companies also provide customer service departments with long hours. They are set up primarily to take your calls, handle rush orders, and to answer your questions promptly. If you prefer to communicate through e-mail, this is a great way to document your order from start to finish. You can e-mail a question to your distributor, leave for lunch, and have it answered by time you return.
A faster ordering time is fifth major result of online purchase. I have personally visited hundreds of clients. This obviously requires an appointment, which naturally must fit into both parties' schedules. An off-line salesperson is forced to interpret your needs prior to your meeting. They bring what samples and catalogs they have on hand, but these may not meet your needs and thus your ordering time will be extended for a second meeting. If you have any questions about product availability, turn around time, or any other factory sensitive inquiries, salesperson will have to return to his office in order to contact factory, in order to answer your question. When you order from an online company, customer service team is already in their office, so they can contact factory with your questions and call you back immediately.
