We think we are great at designing pens and servicing our customers but we are not so hot on telling you about all the stuff we do. Hopefully we can rectify that in time but in the meantime I want to tell you about our digital merchandising service for pens and our range of promotional pens on particular.

We have a small but effective in-house facility for producing banners and we use this service for producing digital media for our exhibitions and roadshows. It is not a commercial part of the business but nevertheless we can provide bespoke roll up banners for exhibitions for our pens and design them for our distributors at cost. To keep the price down we buy the cassettes in bulk from The Far East and print the graphics here at The Pen Warehouse. As I said we are not geared up for doing 100 banners if that is what you want but we can do single banners to support our loyal distributors. Banners are about 1.8 metres high and 850mm wide and we can print them in full colour. Print quality is extremely high and we only use the best graphical backing material so they will stand a lot of use. Give us a cal for more details.

We can also supply display posters and snappy frames for your office and showroom displaying each of our printed pens. These can also be personalised with your details for that bespoke look; you are bound to impress you customers when they visit your showroom.

Why not give us a call and we can explain our full support services and also keep an eye the latest news here at The Pen Warehouse – The home of printed pens and personalised pens.

You know, the business of selling pens to the trade has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Then it was simply a matter of paying for entry into business gifts catalogues and possibly producing the odd personalised pens catalogue of your own. Nowadays, the level of support primarily because of digital imaging and the internet is awesome.

Here at The Pen Warehouse, we have built up a library of quality images over the years including photographic images and vector drawings. Tens of thousands of hours has gone into the making of this library and it is being added to each day. It would be true to say that photography of promotional pens and digital manipulation at The Pen Warehouse is a permanent job for a number of people. Do we need to go to this expense? – Not really is the answer. Fortunately or unfortunately our MD was a professional product photographer and consequently he insists that we set the bar very high. He takes many of the images himself in high resolution on a large film gallery camera – none of that digital rubbish where constricted dynamic range, artefacts and weird colours are the order of the day. No Siree – good old fashioned film 10″ x 8″ transparencies drum scanned for the perfect results. This is the standard set by National Geographic for many of its top images and dare I say it ‘Playboy Magazine’ where outstanding gradation of colour is paramount.

It is amazing that twelve years works can be condensed onto one single DVD, but it can and it is freely available to our distributors for your website, catalogues or any form of digital merchandising. Why, we have images of printed pens that can be produced for pop up banners 6 feet tall without a pixel in sight and razor sharp edges – that’s how good they are. Just ask our sales department for your DVD and we will get it off in the post to you today.

Keep tuned into our newsroom here at The Pen Warehouse – The home of promotional pens and pencils.

Pens come and go and this is very true of personalised pens in particular as the promotions market chases the latest in design. However, some promotional pens stay around forever and probably the best example of this is our time-honoured printed pen; namely our range of  Giotto Ballpens.

With its metal upper part and high quality injection moulded barrel, rounded off with a chrome plated metal nosecone, this pen oozes traditional values. Indeed it has often been compared to the range of Parker Jotter Ballpens, which we also stock and is a much less expensive option. The body houses a black refill with an extra large reservoir of German documental quality ink = the preferred colour for completing formal documents and also for photocopying. It is a firm favourite then with Solicitors, Police Forces and the Legal profession.

These pens are great as advertising or printed  pens because the barrel can be printed in up to six colours and we can match these very closely to the shades of your choice. The barrel comes in five traditional colours and complements the upper chrome part of the pen perfectly. This pen operates on a push-button mechanism and we can supply a range of packaging options to suit every budget. Of particular note is our range of pen tubes that barely add any cost to the product but is the perfect accessory when you want to impress.

If you would like something even a little bit more exclusive we can also supply this pen in an all-metal construction. The barrel is impact extruded from solid brass, then chrome plated and finally a protective lacquer is applied to reduce smearing during use. These are The Giotto Metal Ball Pens which also can be supplied with a matching mechanical pencil as a boxed set. Although these look really expensive, they are in actual fact very reasonably priced.

Keep tuned to our daily news report from The Pen Warehouse – The Home of Printed Pens and Pencils.

Pens, or more specifically personalised pens don’t just have to be standard off-the -shelf promotional items – they can be supplied as custom pens as well.

By this I mean not only can you rely on the printed message to carry your corporate colours, you can also have the colours of the pens themselves either mix and matched or moulded in a specific shade. We refer to this type of personalisation as custom pens or bespoke pens. Here is a list of options that The Pen Warehouse can provide.

Mix and Match Pens:

• Kiki Fantasia: This belongs to the larger Kiki Pen range that is available in a range of standard colours. The Fantasia Range refers to a type of pen personalisation that allows these standard component colours to be arranged to your specification. With the Kiki pens this refers to the barrel, upper body and clip. This allows for an endless amount of permutations to suit your corporate identity. You can also have these as printed pens by asking for personalisation on the barrel and the clip. Minimum order for this is just 1,000 pieces
• X-Three Fantasia: These are two-piece pens for advertising – barrels and clips. The minimum order quantity is 3,000 pieces and are a more cost-effective option to the Kiki Pen range
• X-Five Fantasia: These pens must surely be the ultimate in personalisation. You can mix and match the nosecone, rubber grip, barrel, lower cap and clip giving you an endless choice of combinations. We don’t stop there as not only can we print the barrel and clip we can also print an inner cylinder that rotates inside the barrel that is visible when a transparent barrel is chosen. Minimum quantity here is 1,000 pieces.

Special Coloured Pens

• You can have any pen in our range moulded to a specific colour reference of your choice. Pantone matches can be fairly closely matched but please bear in mind that these references are translucent in nature and our pens will be opaque – consequently do not expect the same brilliance in colour. However, this has never been an issue on any order and we also offer an optional pre-production proofing service for your peace of mind
• Minimums start from 5,000 pieces. Please call for more information.

So, no matter what you want we can cater for it in terms of colour options.

Keep tuned to our daily news bulletins to hear the latest offerings on promotional pens from The Pen warehouse

I have done a few news items now outlining my thoughts on the direction that the route to market for pens but more specifically promotional and personalised pens is changing, particularly where online trading is concerned. In summary, we are seeing many distributors becoming importers and trade suppliers and there are also strong indicators that seemingly trade-exclusive suppliers are either sponsoring, working hand-in-glove or ‘cloaking’ to secure route to market. What is The Pen Warehouse’s answer to this?  Will we consider going direct at some point in the future?

This is a question I am being asked with increasing regularity by distributors because the more enlightened ones can see what is going on in the war for route to market. Here in the UK we have a long history of being ‘exclusive’ rather than ‘inclusive’ in the way we operate in the promotions industry. Our two trade bodies are not inclusive in any way as membership dictates that it is fundamentally exclusive. We see the same thing with general promotional gift websites and catalogues that are seemingly even-handed but in reality are heavily biased towards one supplier or another. Indeed there are many so-called trade catalogues that exclude some trade suppliers altogether as they see them as a threat to their own overt or covert operation. It is little wonder therefore that some distributors see the writing on the wall for the traditional methods of distribution prevailing, particularly as there seems to be less incentive for trade-exclusive suppliers to remain so.

Here at The Pen Warehouse, we have no intention whatsoever of going direct to the end user by overt or covert means. We have every confidence that a large body of distributors have a  strong preference for dealing with trade exclusive suppliers providing that we deliver great customer service benefits. However, we do not simply want to stop there. The Pen Warehouse has always provided benefits to distributors that are creative and groundbreaking and we intend to continue in this vein. So far we have helped revolutionise the printed pens business by introducing products and services that were industry-firsts, leaving our competitors to simply try and mimic what we are doing. Here are just a few.

• Largest and most comprehensive Pen Catalogue Anywhere in Europe
• The first company to introduce 24 hour service
• The first pen supplier to supply both recycled and biodegradable pens
• The first company to supply pens with recycled refills
• The first to offer an anonymous pen website to the trade
• The first Germ killing Pen with modern technology
• The first to offer low volume orders in full colour
• The first to offer high quality product images in all colour options
• The first and still the only trade supplier to actively support their loyal distributors by passing leads to them.

Really, the list goes on and on and that is not to mention what we have planned for release in the next few months and years. We believe that innovative approach to trade supply keeps us ahead of the competition. Competition, by and large that is bereft of creative ideas; whose best attempt to retaliate is to copy and plagiarise and in doing so are destined to be second-rate forever. We hold great respect for our loyal distributors and in turn they recognise our contribution to the industry by way of our innovative approach that helps stimulate interest with the end-user and ultimately leads to more orders. That is our way forward, it is unique but we have the wherewithal and the determination to ensure we stay on this path into the foreseeable future.

Stay tuned to our news items coming to you on a daily basis – The Pen Warehouse, home of promotional pens.

I think it is fairly obvious to most keen observers of the changes in the promotional pen industry that the lines between being a trade supplier of personalised pens and an end-user supplier are becoming blurred. As discussed in an earlier news item more and more distributors are becoming trade suppliers whilst at the same time demanding that their own suppliers remain trade-exclusive. An onerous aspiration if ever I heard one as it is fundamentally unfair. I believe a number of seemingly trade exclusive suppliers of personalised pens are not standing idly by and are finding their own route to market through the following mechanisms

• Overtly opening or buying a distributor business and using that to secure route to market. This is seemingly like shooting yourself in the foot but in reality there is little downside to running with the hare and hunting with the hound. This will be the topic of a future article related to the trade sales of personalised pens.
• Working hand-in-glove with existing distributors on an exclusive or semi-exclusive basis. This is like a half way house and of course there is nothing wrong with the practice but it is a policy that is designed to curry favour with a particular distributor (usually influential) on the basis of excluding other distributors. It is a matter of opinion whether this is an acceptable practice for selling personalised pens and the two opinions on the matter are probably governed by whichever side of the fence you are sitting on.
• Cloaking: The practice of overtly selling personalised pens to the end-user through a distributor business that is covertly owned or sponsored by the seemingly trade-exclusive supplier. There is no hard evidence this is happening but there are plenty of indicators to suggest it is being used as a strategy, particularly where online business is concerned. Opinion on this will be divided on the lines of whether it is right or wrong. Distributors will clearly feel betrayed and many trade exclusive suppliers will quietly be thinking ‘not for me at the moment, but I will keep my options open’.

Does this mean that I believe we will have umpteen trade-exclusive businesses going direct in a covert fashion somewhere down the line? I don’t know is the answer but  I do know that The Pen Warehouse has a strategy in place that will secure our position as trade-exclusive supplier forever.

However, in an industry such as ours, where there are no trade associations with regulatory teeth it was always going to be an inevitability that trade-exclusive suppliers would be forced to resort to desperate measures. If it is happening we should blame nobody but ourselves for sitting on our hands and allowing our industry to be largely unregulated. That will also be the basis of a future news item on personalised pens.

Stay tuned in to our daily news desk here at The Pen Warehouse – The Home Of Personalised Pens.

In an earlier post I touched on the importance of being a trade-exclusive supplier of pens and personalised promotional pens in particular. This has been a subject of debate long before I came into the industry and no doubt it will carry on long after I have gone. It is a contentious issue and I suppose as humans we want the best of both worlds, supplying to the trade and also supplying to the end-user.

We are seeing an increase in the number of distributors that are also becoming trade suppliers as well and as such are our competitors. It is a one-way street, seemingly, as there is no evidence of trade-exclusive suppliers abandoning their treasured status although many would like to in adjusting to the new paradigm. The temptation to jump-ship is certainly increasing for many trade-exclusive suppliers as their trading policy is proving to be their achilles heel. There is nothing worse than being constrained by a set of rules whilst at the same time not being protected by them. In other words, trade suppliers are accountable to their customers but it does not work the other way around. That is a fundamental that is difficult to reconcile for any human being and is the stuff of many revolutions.

Like so many revolutions, they rarely happen overnight; there is usually a gestation period of underground covert activity. I believe that there is strong evidence that sort of covert activity is now in place for a small but growing number of trade-exclusive suppliers. Of course I am focussed on the printed pens industry but there is no reason to suggest that it is not happening across the whole industry. I would refer to this as ‘cloaking’ because there are numerous trading companies appearing on the internet selling promotional items and personalised pens in particular that seem to be exclusively allied to one particular trade supplier. Any attempt to make an appointment to see them with a view to getting our pens on their website is denied in various ways – and a small number actually refuse to even discuss the issue. One seemingly independent distributor based very close to our head office recently stated that their eco-biased website was no longer actually being proactively used and was virtually defunct – yet they were paying for sponsored advertising on Google with that very site. I suffer from a degree of paranoia like any other driven entrepreneur but what is unmistakable is the increasing level of secrecy behind internet-based companies. Most are who they say they are but there is a huge question mark over many because their openness to competitive alternative products is totally lacking. In a capitalist system where your very survival rests with your competitiveness why would any business owner not pay close attention to all sources of supply, particularly those that would seemingly provide a trading advantage?

Well what is The Pen Warehouse doing about it? You will have to wait for my next news item here at pens.co.uk – the home of personalised pens.