Few industries are able to prove their effectiveness as quickly and easily as the industry for promotional items. How so? Take a look around your office or the T-shirt drawer in your dresser, and count the logos. See? Promotional items work.

It’s not a difficult point to make or to take, and because of that, many awards retailers have long looked into joining the promotional products industry. Naturally, they sought out advice from and membership with the industry’s premier organizations for promotional items: ASI, PPAI and SAGE. In years past, many awards retailers reported that they were unsuccessful in earning membership with these groups.

Many shops today still believe that membership in these groups seemingly requires a Catch-22 set of qualifications.

For example, you are welcome to join ASI, PPAI and SAGE so that your business will have access to thousands of businesses that make and personalize hundreds of thousands of products. In fact, their membership application is on their website. All you have to do to become a new member of the industry is fill in the blanks beside name, address and then list the requested ten or so promotional suppliers you purchased promotional items from and the ten or so promotional customers you sold those promotional items to (there’s no proof like purchase-order proof). Basically, you are left with the impression that all you have to do to join a promotional products association and take advantage of all the resources they offer is prove that you have already been buying, personalizing and selling promotional items without their help.

Huh?

If that seems confusing to you, don’t worry; it only means you’re paying attention. In order to sort out that confusion, we spoke with a couple of the industry’s experts in these matters, and their responses were very helpful. According to them, awards retailers already have a track record in the industry for promotional items—they just don’t know that they do. To read more, click here.