-by Beth Wolfe
Good business relationships are crucial to success. We want, or rather need, clients to be happy to stay in business. If they’re not happy, they’re not going to come back. Worse still, they’ll tell others about the bad experience and you’ll lose prospective clients. We hear from some clients that they have had poor promo product experiences in the past. For all clients, but especially for those clients, we do everything possible to ensure they have a positive experience with us.
Clear, honest and open communication is essential in understanding a client’s wants and needs. Some clients may not know what they want so it’s our job to ask the right questions. We also need clients willing to share information to do our best work. Once we know the details around the event, target audience, and objectives, we can make better recommendations.
The promotional products industry, like so many others, has its good, its bad, and its ugly. We are a distributor who buys the products we sell to our clients from suppliers. In layman’s terms, we’re a middle-man between the factories and our clients. Due to varied manufacturer locations and the goal of lower ship costs, we often ship directly to customers from the supplier. We have to trust that the supplier is providing our end customer with the product as promised and that the quality is up to standard.
As a general rule PBJ Merch Co. only works with suppliers we know and trust. Many we have had longstanding relationships with. We trust their product quality, printing expertise and efficient operations. They have policies and procedures around quality control and consumer product safety to ensure all of their products comply with federal product regulations. They also conduct their business in a socially and ethically responsible manner in North America and overseas. Some suppliers are certified by QCA, the promotional product industry’s independent, non-profit organization dedicated to certifying supplier processes in product safety, quality, supply chain security, social accountability and environmental stewardship. We expect that 99% of projects with these our preferred suppliers will result in a product our clients will be proud to represent their brand.
But faith is not enough, even with those very reliable suppliers. We ask for samples (usually at our cost) to make sure the product is how it appears to be. We’ll only move forward to production once the client has approved the proof or pre-production sample. We do press checks with screen printers to make sure the print looks the way it should before moving to full production. In a situation where banned substance testing could not be verified for an imported product, we conducted third party testing on our own initiative and at our cost to confirm compliance with regulatory requirements. Communication with suppliers is key. We don’t say, “Sold!” and that’s that. We follow-up to make sure all is on track, ask questions and double check on every order to make sure our clients get what they asked for.
Once the client receives their order, the clear, honest and open communication isn’t over. We want to know that they received it on time and they’re happy with it. If they’re not happy, we really need to know that so that we can make it right. We are a small distributor and some of our suppliers are gigantic corporations. But we still expect them to do the right thing by us and our clients. If a supplier sends out a poor product, we expect them to do the right thing and reprint at their cost because that is what our client would expect from us. That doesn’t always happen and in those cases we take the hit to make it right for our client. Doing the right thing means being accountable, no matter how big or small a business you are.
Honesty and integrity are values to live by on a personal level and at work. A very wise client of mine once said, “If we don’t have our integrity, we don’t have anything.” Truer words were never spoken. – by Beth Wolfe