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.

Read Time: 10 Minutes

Like Me, You Might Be Wondering...

I occasionally find myself confused, overwhelmed, and paralyzed by the bombardment of information circulating the internet about employee recognition. Make the mistake of Googling it, and you'll quickly start getting targeted ads about everything from ideas for pens to improve employee engagement to company sponsored trips. So it led me to wonder... how is anyone supposed to know where to start?

Need some help? Download our Employee Recognition Toolbox (below) for ideas & tools to get you started!

Read Time: 7 Minutes

If you're like me, you scour every blog you come across that offers you a list of marketing tools to save you time, headaches, or a way to block your ex-boyfriend's entire existence. Okay... maybe that's just me.

The point is, I'll read anything I can find that could give me some insight into the biggest, baddest , and latest marketing tools to make my job easier because I'm kind of obsessed with efficiency. And here's why...

 Read Time - 7 minutes

Whether ' tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous graphic design, or to take arms against a sea of troubled product concepts, and by opposing end them: to be erased, to be deleted.

Okay, it’s not quite that dramatic, but as a manufacturer of custom awards, our company is faced with a growing challenge:  customer-submitted award designs.  The internet has granted everyone access to all the world’s ideas—good and bad.  And technology has put graphic design within reach of everyone over the age of 4.

Unfortunately, a vast majority of the designs we see are cringe-worthy-concepts that look good on a two-dimensional screen, but defy physics in three-dimensional, tangible space.  Check out the figures above for examples of where cool-looking graphics can lead us astray.

Read Time - 4 Minutes

Twenty-one billion is a mighty big number.  In dollars, that’s the annual sales in the promotional products industry.  If 21 billion one dollar bills, end-to-end, were the perimeter of a pie, the pie would be 323,000 miles across.  As big as that is, it’s a pie that’s cut into many pieces—20,000+ distributor companies with a total population well into six figures.

 To get your share, how do you stand out?  How do you distinguish yourself from everyone else?  What makes you the go-to for your customers?  Differentiating yourself as a resource for custom work is certainly something to consider.  Here’s why…

Read Time: 3 Minutes

In the interest of full disclosure, this article has absolutely nothing to do with the challenges or opportunities you might face as a promotional products distributor.  In fact, it doesn’t really have to do with anything in particular.  Except…

Drumroll, please!

Today is Haiku Poetry Day!  Woo-hoo!  I know, right?  Who woulda thunk it?  Well, whoever it was should be canonized at once as St. Genius, the Patron Saint of Seventeen Syllables. I mean, if yesterday can be designated Eggs Benedict Day, it only makes sense that Haiku should have its own day.

Check out some other fun and unusual holidays here!

Read Time - 7 minutes

The promotional products industry is many things—it’s creative, it’s rewarding, it’s maddening, it’s filled with all kinds of interesting characters.  And it’s quite busy.

In fact, if you take the numbers from Counselor magazine’s 2016 “State of the Industry” issue, dividing the $22 billion in annual revenue by the $1,043 average order size, that means, as an industry, we are handling over 21 million orders per year.  21 million—that’s more than the poulation of the state of New York.  It’s a sh— I mean, uh…a lot.

 Read Time - 4 minutes

…in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a fair prince named Bruce.  Bruce was a fox who lived in a castle with a real moat and everything.  As foxes go, Bruce was the clever variety, not the smarmy and sly type so common to this particular genre of literature.  That sort of stereotype is not what Bruce The Fox is all about.  Like I said, Bruce was a fair prince.  Let’s just leave it at that.

As the CEO of all the land, it was Bruce The Fox’s job to present the annual award to the best storyteller in the kingdom.  And tonight was the big night, as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were slated to receive this year’s award.  Right after Dan Marino’s keynote address.  It was a big night indeed!

But, alas, Bruce The Fox was flummoxed.  In a way that foxes rarely are.  Having contemplated his bemusement with the word flummox, he turned to his mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what shall I present at this night’s ball?”   The mirror said nothing.  It’s a mirror, after all, and mirrors don’t talk, even if foxes do.

Read Time -  5 minutes

I don’t really feel like writing an introduction, and I’ve exceeded my threshold of word count according to the little word-county-thingie at the bottom of the page.  And I didn’t really feel like finding a suitable image for this post either—I’m writing this in the morning, and I guess I’m hungry.  So let’s shortcut to my shortcut of knowledge gleaned from nearly 27 years on the job. 

Cutting through the jargon, I have learned there are a number of things that mean something much different than what you might think:

Read Time - 6 Minutes

I was stopped at a red light near our office and factory, pointed south at the intersection of Grant Line Road and Mt. Tabor Road, a moderately busy intersection in New Albany, Indiana.  I happened to be first in line in the left lane, so I had a clear view of the woman in the car across from me, heading the opposite direction.

She was busy texting.

The light turned green for us both, and I proceded through the intersection while she sat at her green light.  She was still busy texting. 

As I made my way through the intersection, an oncoming car was moving along at a pretty good clip.  I could see, as he passed, that he was busy texting.

The screeching of tires cued me to check the sideview mirror just in time to see the ensuing collision, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of metal and plastic ramming into metal and plastic.  Like a garbage can full of Legos being dropped from 10 feet onto concrete.