One of the major obstacles for a distributor  in selling promotional printed pencils is that you are limited to one colour printing in one position on round wooden pencils. The reason promotional pencil suppliers cannot provide multicolour printing on pencils is because there is no registration point to get a datum point from.

Well, we don’t let little things like that beat us at The Pen Warehouse and for the past 4 years we have been able to offer promotional pencils printed in up to 3 line colours in close registration. Generally speaking you can have these printed pencils either sharpened or unsharpened. Whether you want FSC Pencils, Recycled Pencils, Plastic Pencils, Recycled Paper Pencils, Golf Pencils or normal wooden pencils we can cater for your multicolour printing requirements.

To augment our range of multicolour printed pencils we recently added full clolour printing to our FSC Carpenter Pencil range. These Remarkable Pencils are the perfect promotional items for those eco friendly promotions.

As individuals we all like to think that we are unique in some way and that goes for businesses as well. .

At The Pen Warehouse we love dealing with distributors that want to offer new and innovative products and services because we prefer to concentrate on added-value rather than commodities. We believe we are well placed in this respect with our long history of introducing new concepts, ideas and services to the promotions market.

What has that got to do with printed pens I hear you ask! Well, after over 12 months of R&D we introduced much larger print areas on metal pens to the industry last year. This is not just a UK first, it is a ‘World’ first and only service. We can  now peripherally print on the barrel to within 2mm either side of the clip on many metal pens. That is about 85% of the pen’s circumference adjacent to the clip. 

We would rather not disclose how we developed this technique but it did involve fundamental design changes to the basic principles on how pen printing machines and ancilliaries work and how they are implemented.

This year we extended this large print area option on pad (tampo) printed pens as well and you may have recently seen our mailings on the new improved print areas on the Contour Ballpen. These improvements represent huge advantages to the more enterprising Distributor as they offer opportunities for adding value to your business and in turn this will help you improve margins during these very competitive times.

Call us for more details if you would further information or samples of printed pens with larger print areas.

Since we launched our fun video on the robotic pen on YouTube many distributors have directed their customer’s towards it. The result is that our customers have generated interest in a marginal product that would otherwise not have occurred.

If you follow the link to the Robotic pen above, you will see that we have now added an animated gif to the page to show the action of the pen. This can be incorporated in your own emailshots or added to your website to create interest in the product.

You will notice the image is without personalisation so that you do not need to reveal your source.

Well we are continuing our recycled printed pens theme this week with a new look at recycled plastic pencils.

Our product range is now so big that we have many very important product ranges that distributors never get to exploit their full potential. Have a look at our 126 page catalogue, page 100 or look on this website for our range of recycled plastic pencils that look and behave like wooden pencils.

These are full length pencils that come with an eraser and can be sharpened. The graphite core is HB hardness and we can print up to 3 colours on the barrel in close registration.

Hot Tip

Why not create an emailshot and mail out to 100 of your eco conscious customers and we guarantee that you will generate interest in this exciting promotional item.

The collaboration between Lecce Pen and Tetra Pak over the past 8 years has resulted in the launch of some very exciting products manufactured from recycled drinks cartons. Many of these are products are for the promotional market and include pens desktop items and recycled gadgets.

Of particular interest to The Pen Warehouse is the current crop of Tetra Pak Pens based on a formulation termed EcoAllene. The latest EcoAllene pens have a fully recycled refill – the world’s first in fact. Although this product is a revolutinary development it is priced to sell in volume and will suit the tighest budget. Look out for the Envirostick Pen when you want to place an order for your next eco friendly printed pens

Excelsior Ballpen

Metal Promotional Pens are normall made from either brass or aluminium because of the high level of ductility required during the manufacturing process. Various forms of extrusion techniques are used to produce pen barrels from these materials and although the forces required to fashion each barrel can be measured in tonnes, this is regarded as a relatively easy process.

Although it is one of the cheapest materials we rarely see pens manufactured from ferrous metals such as iron and steel because they require a significant degree of machining to achieve the correct shape. An even tougher material to manufacture pens from however is stainless steel because it does not lend itself to either machining or extruding because of its mechanical properties. However, it is the perfect material to make a metal pen from because it remains tarnish-free throughout its life.

We are very please that we carry one pen in our range that is manufactured from stainless steel; The Excelsior Ballpen. It is beautifully styled, lightweight and lasts a lifetime. We can screen print the barrel in up to 6 accurately matched colours or you can have it laser engraved for that extra touch of luxury. Consequently it is one of our most popular printed pens.

Typically these types of promotional metal pens have two rings in the centre of the barrel and we decided to change the design slightly by having them machined near the grip instead. This allows us to offer much larger print areas in line with

How very lucky we are to have been born during a time when we can enjoy the many benefits that fossil fuels bring to our daily lives. Transportation, electricity-production, heating and manufactured goods all depend heavily on that energy source  bequeathed to us by organic lifeforms since the dawn of time.

Are we using our limited resourcs wisely? Many would say not…and some would go so far as to say that generations to come will look on us as wasteful and poor custodians of earth’s bounty. Whether you share that view or not it is a fact that we are using up our deposits of fossil fuels at an alarming and accelerating rate and eventually the only ones left on earth will be those that are too difficult or expensive to reach. That pricks most people’s conscious because we know our oil addiction will in the span of a few generations undo the work that took nature many millions of years to create and we will leave future generations all the poorer for it.

Well there is something we can all do with just a little effort and that is, consume less and recycle more. I will mention my company, The Pen Warehouse just to illustrate some of the things we have managed to implement in recent years so that our oil addiction is kept in check.

1. We now source electricity from wind farms
2. We use low-energy lighting in most parts of our plant
3. All waste cardboard and paper is compacted and recycled
4. We use the latest energy-efficient gas heating throughout the plant
5. We encourage the use of recycled plastic pens,  recycled plastic pencils and many other promotional desktop items.

We are the first to admit that as a for-profit organisation we have a vested interest in extolling the virtues of recycled promotional products as they form an important part of our revenue stream. However, we put a disproportionate amount of time, money and effort into the development of recycled promotional products in general as we do not measure ‘success’ in terms of profit alone.

We are particularly pleased with the latest development, the very unique Envirostick Ballpen with EcoAllene refill – actually the world’s first and only truly recycled post-consumer pen refill. Until now all pens on the market that claim to be recycled, including many of our own, actually do not have a recycled refill. It is a small victory for us but it is one that makes us smile!….Why not put a smile on your face too by pasing the message on to your customers? You may even get an order!

When choosing a promotional pen for a hotel it is of vital importance to first consider how much a printed pen says about an establishment. Suggesting that the choice of promotional pen will dictate the success or failure of a hotel would be considered some what ridiculous, however, taking into consideration the impression a promotional pen can have on a customers’ experience is not so far fetched.

When checking into a hotel after a long day on the road the customer will inevitably be asked to complete a check-in form. The inevitable response to this request is “have you got a pen I could use?” Bear in mind the customer has only just crossed the threshold and the printed pen is their first tangible experience of the hotel. Agreed, the customer may be exceptionally tired and the last thing on their mind will be the quality of the pen. However, consider the possibility that the pen doesn’t work; the customers’ first tangible experience of the hotel is ruined by a poor quality promotional pen and the trauma exaggerated because the customer is tired.

The initial customer experience at check-in is superseded by the impact of the final experience the customer has of the hotel, which again the promotional pen plays a fundamental role in. The customer has enjoyed a good nights sleep and wakes refreshed, ready to take on the days challenges. They have their breakfast, gather their luggage and then visit reception to check-out where they are asked to sign for any extras, the inevitable questions returns “do you have a pen I could use?” Now this is where the hotel will make or break the customers experience, let’s assume in this instance the hotel has a supply of good quality promotional pens, printed with clear corporate branding, the customer signs for their expenses, subliminally enjoying the experience as the printed pens from the hotel actually works this time, putting the pen in their pocket and heading to their car having enjoyed a positive experience. Later that day they return home, empty their pockets and find the pen from their stay at the hotel. As the pen is good quality and an item used every day it becomes a household object for the entire life of the pen refill with the brand identity of the hotel at the forefront of the mind of anybody that uses it.

It would be absurd to suggest that using good quality promotional pens for hotels will inherently bring about a measurable increase in sales. However, when customers have a good experience with a product or service they are likely to tell far less people than if they have a bad experience, why run the risk of tarnishing a hotels reputation by using an inferior quality pen?

For advice on a suitable promotional pen for hotels or any other promotional requirements why not give our sales team a call on 01252 400270.

Have you noticed there are changes afoot in the metal promotional pens business? They’re sleeker, lighter and brighter than ever before! Well it’s all down to an old electro-chemical process called anodising (Anodizing U.S.) using aluminium as a base metal.

Anodized aluminium pens have a distinctive look in that they appear peculiarly metallic with a high-gloss translucent finish. The only exception to this is when the colour is black because the base metal is obliterated by the dyed anodised coating. However, in black it still retains its unique anodised finish.

Metal Promotional pen styles have changed to reflect the contemporary finish that anodising produces and this has breathed new life into this genre of the promotional merchandise market. There is no better example of this than the Electra Ballpen. Anodised aluminium pens are here to stay!

Hot Tip

Emailshot your top 100 customers that require prestigious promotional gifts with the image and specifications of our Electra Ballpen, take on extra staff to man the phones and get busy!