Print Blog: Communicate, Motivate, Educate, Enhance, Celebrate, Animate, and Promote with Print and Promotional Products

How To Manage Inventory: Corporate Printed And Promotional Items

Posted by Jody Raines on Wed, Feb 2, 2011 @ 12:59 PM

Corporate approved promo items can be a cause of wasted time, conflict and ultimatelyCollateral printed items
frustration for corporate marketing and staff in the field.  The field team doesn’t want to have to check in with corporate to get permission to create materials.  Corporate is charged with maintaining the integrity of the brand, and may not have the time to deal with multiple requests coming in from the field.  It’s an ongoing dilemma. 

How can you protect the integrity of your brand, especially when there are multiple entities creating reproductions in different colors, spacing, fonts, and inadvertently distorting the logo?

There is a solution!  Consider a portal for company authorized merchandise.  Using a password, your associates can order approved printed material, on demand, without having to go through the approval process every time.  

This is what a corporate store is for your brand.

If  you consider the amount of time spent reviewing and evaluating corporate products as your company grows, it can be staggering.  Especially when there are so many people who think it’s OK to print mugs or shirts, or signs without understanding how to protect the brand.  Having a corporate store with pre-approved signage. 

There are two ways that a corporate store can operate, it can be a storage and fulfillment site, or it can be a print on demand situation. Either way, having someone manage your printed collateral for you can save money in both the short and long term. Typically, waste occurs when:

  • Items are misplaced or 'lost'
  • Items wind up unused due to ordering too much for a single location
  • Items are not the right size for the promotion
  • Items wind up being destroyed due to poor storage practices
  • Items take valuable inventory space
  • Items wind up being forgotten (until its time to clean the warehouse)

Setting up a corporate store is easy.  Supply your logo, your PMS color selections, any guidelines for using your logo, and the products your corporate store will offer  You may also want to set up buying rules for the branches or field location - how many they can order at one time, which items, who has authority to make changes, etc.  After you've set that up, the company store can be set up with multiple user names and passwords, and on a monthly basis, you will get a report of the ongoing status.  That's it. It's efficient, saving time and expense, and you will also have an ongoing record of where your items are at any given time. 

Corporate stores can be set up for many types of items, including:

  • Brochures and collateral
  • Custom imprinted folders for presentations
  • Laminated folders
  • Banners for trade shows
  • Give-a-ways such as pens or promotional items
  • Signage and graphics
  • Banners for events
  • Table top signs
  • Store promotional signs
  • Custom printed USB drives, water bottles
  • and more!

With a corporate store your associates have access to items when needed, and unless there is an advantage of having them stored in the field, you can control where the inventory is, as well as track who is ordering and where the items are going. 

We'd be happy to discuss setting up a corporate store for your location.  Contact us and you'll be surprised you operated without the corporate store!

Topics: company store, corporate store, branding, brochures