Bruce Fox Blog

Estimated read time: 13 minutes

You hear it every year, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” Then people stammer out something that they want but will only half-heartedly try for. Do you know how much the gym is flooded in January, but yet it goes back to normal just a few months later? Maybe a few people will stick it out and succeed, but the majority of people give up.

So rather than giving you another useless New Year’s resolution and try to inspire you to do something that will never become a habit (which is what is needed to succeed in one of those resolutions), we will give you something to try, to experiment with. Because let’s be honest, that’s what the New Year is about. Trying out new things, keeping what we want and discarding the unpleasant.

Estimated read time: 4 minutes

Let’s be honest, from Thanksgiving until early January, the holiday spirit chases you down and tackles you. From sugarplum fairies dancing in your head to the barrage of “holiday sales,” you’re going to be hearing about the holidays no matter where you go.

Well, let us take a moment to jump on that bandwagon. Not the “sales” portion, but the goodwill towards men and cheerful spirit. We want to bring out the humanity behind the fox logo. Yes, there are real humans, even craftsman, behind that big blue fox.

We wanted to share with you what we do for the holidays.

Estimated read time: 5 minutes

Santa is a magical being. He can survive in the frozen tundra, can deliver presents all over the world in one night, and is able to check that infinitely long list of who is naughty or nice twice. Santa is amazing – he is a parent’s favorite person, and their worst nightmare (no one can compete with Santa’s reputation and deep pocketbook).

Santa and his elves work tirelessly on making toys all year. Buddy the Elf told us all about the elf life, remember? They make stuffed animals, rocking horses, and so much more. So, Santa and his elves can make anything, right?

Estimated Read Time:  13 minutes

In the last 48 hours, we have received countless emails. Everything from the 6 PPAI and ASI promotional emails we get per day to typical spam, while other emails are relevant to current projects or are leads. Then there are the emails that go down a rabbit hole that makes you wish you could be on whatever Lewis Carroll had.

What emails are these? Don’t worry; we can give you examples because we have emails like these metaphorically piling up to our eyeballs.

Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

True or False: Promotional products are a form of advertisement or marketing.

If you said false, then you have two options.

1. You can click off this article and read something that aligns more with your views.
2. You can read on with an open mind.

Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

ASI recently published an article about how a proposed provision could hurt incentive award sales. It discusses that to offset the costs of tax cuts, advertising specialties like awards and incentives are under fire. The new provision would consider achievement awards for safety and service awards as income for employees, making them taxable revenues. This will also limit the employer’s ability to write off awards for tax deductions. This will certainly raise federal revenues, but this will significantly hurt portions of the promotions industry.

Estimated read time: 5 minutes

Oops, you lost another client.

You turned your back on a sale that exceeded $5,000 and you didn’t even blink an eye. Even worse, that could have been a yearly renewal that is practically easy money.

Gut wrenching, isn’t it? Thinking about the sales goals you could have easily hit and all the money you missed out on. It’s especially scary when you start wondering that if you missed one, how many more you missed.

Estimated read time:  9 minutes

How do you approach sales? Do you think if you can sell one product, then you can sell anything?

So if you sell apples, then do you believe you can sell oranges, bananas, and pumpkins the same way? All you have to do is throw everything in a catalog and say, “Here you go,” with a little bit of background knowledge and pull out your famous “salesperson” persona?

If that’s how you approach sales, and want to continue doing so, then stop reading. Walk away and stay in your bubble… far, far away from here.

Read Time: 3 Minutes

Photo by Nine Köpfer on Unsplash

Being a promotional products distributor usually means wearing lots of different hats. Therefore, a lot of skills are required of promotional product professionals in order to have a successful business and bank account. Among some of the more obvious ones: perseverance, resourcefulness, and a lot of patience.

Read Time: 6 Minutes

If you’ve somehow managed to never fall victim to bad design (I don’t believe you) then it’s at least certain you’ve seen it. The example that always comes immediately to mind is an eye sore of a building in nearby Louisville (picture above) called the Kaden Building. Is is perhaps, the ugliest building I’ve ever seen and I involuntarily curl my lip in disgust every time I pass it. Who designed this building? None other than Frank Lloyd Wright.

For anyone that doesn’t know who Frank Lloyd Wright is, it’s worth taking a second to pull him up on Wikipedia. He’s a famous American architect who designed over 1,000 structures including his most famous, the Fallingwater house. Over 500 of those designs were actually created. And in fact, your town, like mine, might even be the “lucky” home of one of his designs. The thing is, while Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs were inarguably beautiful, they were crap.