We are all familiar with plastic promotional pens that are screenprinted but a lot less is known about transfer printed pens. Hopefully this article will shed some light on the subject.

Advantages

• Full colour printing is possible
• The whole barrel area can be covered
• High Gloss finish
• Fine detail is no problem

Disadvantages

• Minimum order quantity is 500
• Not as cheap as screenprinted pens
• Express service is not possible
• Overlapping seam will appear on the back of the printed pens.

So you see there are pros and cons to transfer printed pens but if you want it in full colour then there is very little option. Have a look at our range  of Abacus Ball Pens if you want the best the market can offer on transfer printed pens.

However, if you would like a range of  full colour promotional pens on an express service with none of the limitations of transfer printed pens have a look at our range of  Spectrum Ball Pens

We often get asked how we do our printed pens so we have compiled a short list of processes that we have in-house, here at The Pen Warehouse

• Screen Prinnted Pens. The most popular type ofprinting for  personalised pens available in today’s promotions market. Ideal for printing promotional Plastic pens, Promotional Metal Pens and wooden promotional pens. Considerations; The printed area must be regular, such as a cylinder or flat. Suitable for short and long runs.
• Pad Printed Pens. The second most popular method for printing pens. Great for compound irregular shapes. Can be used for printing metal pens, plastic pens and wooden pens
• Laser Engraved Pens. Only suitable for metal pens or wooden pens. The colour will be the same colour as the base material. Peripheral printing is popular on cylinderical pens but it depends on the type of artwork being used
• Gravure Printed Pens: We use this for very large print runs. Quality is high, registration is accurate but the process is limited to plastic promotional pens with regular barrels
• Transfer Printed Pens: This is suitable for round barrels and flat barrels. Benefits are that images are in full photographic colour. Only suitable for plastic prnted pens.
• Flexography Printed Pens: We use this for very large orders in multicolour line colours. Ideal for the own-label market and less critical print quality
• Foil Blocked Pens: Limited use for us these days and suitable only for flat items.

We hope the above gives you an insight into how promotional plastic pens are personalised

In an Industry dominated by Plastic Pens it is refreshing to see a new age dawn with regard to metal printed  pens.

Traditional promotional metal pens are made from brass and are electoplated with either nickel or chromium or they are stove enamelled (painted). This is fine but there are a number distinct limitations with this type of combination

• They tend to be expensive because of their brass composition and also electroplating produces a high level of rejects
• Laser engraved metal pens made from brass means that the resultant engraved finish is gold in appearance and does not match the silver finish of the rest of the metal pen.
• Painted brass pens are not easy to laser engrave as the coating thickness varies and consequently uniformity in surface edge definition is difficult to achieve.
• Brass based pens tend to be heavy and therefore not very universally acceptable to both genders.

Anodized aluminium pens on the other hand suffer from none of these problems. They are relative inexpensive, easily laser engraved, the engraved finish matches the silver trim and they are reasonably lightweight. They also have one other major advantage in that they come in a range of dyed finishes that is unique to the anodizing process and this brings a new dimension to their use as promotional pens particularly because of their contemporary ‘look’.

So, next time you are considering a conventional brass pen spare a thought for the new kids on the block – The Range of Anodized Aluminium Promotional Pens

Promotional pencils in general are becoming more popular than ever before and we think this is due to their low price point when compared to printed pens.

As Europe’s leading supplier of promotional wooden pencils we have a long pedigree in, not only the supply of these promotional items but also in how they are printed. Most distributors are convinced that wooden pencils are restricted to single colour printing and it is difficult to break this perception. Here at The Pen Warehouse, we usually overcome technical obstacles with ease but it is much more difficult to convey to our distributors the sales potential of offering little-known services. If you can learn to exploit the full potential of this you will create greater margins and drive demand. Have a look at our page on multi-colour printing of pencils.

Within the huge wooden pencil range that we hold in stock are some real gems in terms of the potential they hold for increasing interest and margin. A very good example is our range of Black Wood Pencils. This exquisite range of promotional pencils comprise the Black Knight Wooden Pencils  both with and without eraser. They are great for training rooms, seminars and hotels. They have a high perceived value and leave a lasting impression for the recipient. Research has shown that the target audience is more likely to keep a unique printed promotional pen or promotional pencil for personal use, thus allowing the advertiser constant exposure for their advertising message or logo.

Promotional Pens should not only be capable of carrying your message to your target audience though its large print areas but in the best-case-scenario should be talking points in themselves.

This is certainly no easy task as everything in the promotional merchandise market seems to have been done to death with many distributors resorting to churning out the same old stuff over and over again – selling on price for commodity items. The conventional sales skills I learnt as a young man in terms of customer empathy, body language, punctuality, relationship building etc are largely irrelevant in today’s internet business. You are now judged on website content, layout, speed, backlinks and the occasional slight-of-hand so that you are visible to internet traffic and the actual selling part is very-much of secondary consideration. After all if the search engines can’t find your website you have nobody to sell to. It is therefore of primary importance that you find a method of bringing traffic to your website and this article is not intended to help you do that but more about what you should do once you get an enquiry for printed pens.

Presuming you have attracted traffic by some means or other here is a short list of tips to help you maximise your chances of converting that enquiry.

–          Reply immediately. Research has shown that those that respond to internet enquiries fastest will get a higher percentage of orders.

–          Walk the client through the selection process, preferably by telephone.

–          Recommend a promotional item that is unusual in some way that will have an intrinsic appeal. Robotic pens such as the Transformer Robotic Pen or the Reflex Robotic Pen are ideal as they are a talking point in themselves – Labour that point with your client. This approach will also give you a much better chance of earning a better margin on the sale.

–          Offer a small free gift that will have appeal to the individual placing the order

–          Keep in contact with your client if they do not place an order immediately

I hope this helps with your internet sales. Browse the website for a huge range of ideas to help you turn ideas into orders.

It’s a niche market – The security business as far as Promotional Pens go but nevertheless an important one.

Take our Stealth UV Marker for instance, it sits at the back of our current catalogue, page 90 and is lost amongst a sea of vibrant promotional pens. Perhaps it’s living up to its name as an invisible pen? ….Only joking of course – it’s a ‘Cracker!… and some Distributors are doing very well out of promoting it…you know who you are!

The Stealth UV Marker is brilliant for the security industry, the police and local authorities. The pen writes with an invisible ink (invisisible to the naked eye that is) but when exposed to UV light the image is fluorescent. Fantastic for marking household goods discreetly and is one of those functional items no household should be without.

The barrel is made from Polypropylene to ensure maximum life of the liquid ink as it is a non-porous casing and we can print up to 6 colours, matched to your requirements.

 HOT TIP FOR DISTRIBUTORS

Why not go to Yell.COM, look Up Security Services, (or a similar term) in your area and send them an image with your selling prices … and you’ll make a fantastic margin.

Surely the Coelacanth of the Promotional Pen Industry – It was around before most of us became involved with selling promotional pens.

Well we have 3 types; gold trim, silver trim and all-over silver and it is still a great seller. Very popular with the Hotel Industry as they are a little traditional in style. The silver trim version is a new twist on an old theme and it has turne dthis pen into a modern classic.

The Alpine Ball Pens range comes with jumbo black refill as standard and the cap-action of the pen makes it a firm favourite. We have lost count of the amount of Alpines we have sold as printed pens over the years but it is certainly many millions.

Call us today for samples today for samples of further information

Like so many other debates in our industry the age-old one about whether you can call your company trade exclusive and still sell souvenirs direct to tourist attractions such as museums, theme parks etc shows no sign of dying down.

Here at The Pen Warehouse, we do not sell direct to these tourist attractions as we prefer to sell to wholesalers, who in turn sell our products on. Could we sell direct to these potential customers and still remain trade-exclusive? The simple answer is yes we could. Then why don’t we do it I hear you ask? – well it’s because we have a number of distributors that sell both business gifts and souvenirs and we believe the boundaries between the two are quite blurred at times and it could be contentious.

Why are souvenirs not considered business gifts? Simple, they are really a retail product and are not gifted, they are sold. Also, the end user is a consumer and not a business.

If there are any business gift distributors out there that also sell souvenirs then we feel we are great to partner with because there is no potential conflict of interest. As well as promotional pens we have tons of souvenir products and here are a few.

Souvenir Popper Pencil

Souvenir Foil Pencils

Souvenir Multicolour Pencils

Souvenir Crayons

Souvenir Colouring Pencils

Souvenir Erasers

And loads, loads more. Just browse the website.

I think it is safe to say that sales in general are down across most industries and I suppose our own industry is no different.

The big question is, ‘has sales of eco-friendly business gifts been affected more than general promotional items?’. Well by all accounts the recession seems to have affected sales of environmentally friendly pens and pencils disproportionately. My first reaction was to apportion this anomaly to the public sector and their current budgetary constraints but it seems the main reason that eco-friendly promotional items have taken a surprising dip is that when it comes down to it the end-user seems more concerned about saving money than the environment….or was the planet ever the real issue in their minds?

The more cynical amongst us would say that perhaps political correctness was always the driving force behind the sales of eco-friendly products as everyone tries to remain onside in the environmental debate.

Whether demand for promotional products was fuelled by tree huggers or politically correct executives in pinstripe suits it is largely irrelevant to us – all we know is that sales need to be better. Step aside please and let The Pen Warehouse work its magic…. yes you guessed it we have several recycled  products that cost no more than normal promotional pens and pencils. Have a google at the Panther Eco ballpen, the Envirostick and the Recycled Plastic Pencil

We are all waiting here at PW for your orders to flood in now that you know this exciting news!

We all like to think we will leave our mark as something to be remembered by and carpenters are no exception. They leave marks everywhere, many as a reminder of that measurement they didn’t get quite right and it remains on the wood as a symbol to us all that we can’t everything right all of the time.

We all leave an unavoidable mark on our environment, just by being here and the extent of that mark is down to each one of us. We are much more enlightened about such matters these days and consequently we feel under a moral obligation to do our bit so that future generations inherit the planet in a state no-worse than we found it.

FSC wood makes a small, but important contribution to global forest sustainability and this in turn ensures that the lungs of our planet, the trees, continue their task of providing oxygen for us to breathe. We are fighting a losing battle through deforestation in the poorer countries of South America and Africa as their inhabitants try to provide for their families by creating more agricultural land. That need for survival is what drove us to cause widespread deforestation here in the West several thousand years ago so nobody can take the moral high ground when judging. A meaningful solution will only emerge when we work with countries that are involved in deforestation so that they can afford to abandon it and that is some way off as it requires the political will of our politicians. In the meantime we should strive to ensure that wherever possible we support forest sustainability and that is where The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) comes in. They are a global organisation that monitor sustainable forests and provide a chain of custody certificate to ensure FSC wood is genuinely produced from sustainable sources.

At The Pen Warehouse we have two different types of pencils made from FSC wood, conventional round FSC wooden pencils and also carpenters pencils. Why not help Carpenters leave fewer marks, particularly environmental ones by choosing FSC Carpenters pencils for your next promotion.