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Promotional products – with a name like that, they should sell themselves, right?
If you’re in marketing and advertising, you’ve definitely heard of promotional products. But if you’re looking to set up online company stores on behalf of a corporation, you may not have.
Promotional items are products imprinted with a custom design, such as a company’s name, logo, or message. These products are often given as gifts to increase brand awareness, used as trade show giveaways, or sold in company stores.
But have you ever wondered about the challenges of selling these products through a company store? Well, wonder no more. This guide has every one of your doubts and ambitions covered!
Challenge #1: How do you choose the right products for your online company store?
The first challenge in selling promotional products through an online company store is selecting the right products for employees, clients, and stakeholders. Ask yourself:
- What branded apparel will they like?
- Will corporate apparel also need to be considered?
- Do you go for something functional like a water bottle or something fun like a stress ball?
However, it’s important to remember that the product you choose should align with your brand image and messaging. For example, giving away a frisbee might not be the best choice if you’re a financial company. On the other hand, a sleek, high-quality pen could be the perfect fit.
Challenge #2: Branding across your custom online company store and branded merch.
Once you’ve selected the perfect product, the next challenge is to ensure that the branding is spot-on. The last thing you want is for your logo to be imprinted in the wrong color or for the text to be too small to read.
To ensure that the branding is just right, it’s important to work with a reputable and experienced promotional products supplier. They’ll be able to advise you on the best branding methods and materials to use and will even provide virtual proofs so you can see exactly what the final product will look like before placing your order.
Challenge #3: Pricing and payment method.
Pricing is a tricky aspect of selling promotional products through a company store. You want to ensure that the products are priced competitively, but at the same time, you don’t want to sell them at a loss.
One way to balance the pricing is to offer various products at different price points. This allows customers to choose the product that best fits their budget while still allowing you to make a profit.
From your customer’s perspective, there’s nothing more frustrating than sitting at checkout with a cartful of items ready to pay only to find out the payment options they want to use to aren’t available. If this happens time after time, this poor customer experience can result in hundreds if not thousands of dollars of lost sales.
Once your pricing has been set, you need to ensure your online company store can accept multiple payment methods. Think purchase orders, gift certificates, localized currencies, credit cards, payroll deductions, and more!
Challenge #4: Inventory Management
Managing inventory can be a real headache when selling promotional products through a company store. You don’t want to run out of stock on a popular item, but at the same time, you don’t want to be left with a warehouse full of products that no one wants.
To help manage inventory, it’s important to track sales and regularly review the product mix to see what’s selling and what’s not. You can also work with your supplier to establish a minimum and maximum order quantity, which will help ensure that you have enough stock to meet demand.
Despite the challenges, there are many joys to selling promotional products through a company store. Here are just a few:
The Joys of Selling Promotional Products
Despite the challenges, there are many joys to selling promotional products through a company store. Here are just a few:
1. Convenience is Key
Gone are the days of endlessly searching for the perfect promotional product, making phone calls to suppliers, and waiting for products to arrive. With an online company store, you can browse through a variety of products, place an order, and have it delivered right to your doorstep. How convenient is that?
2. Brand Consistency is a Breeze
With an online company store, you can ensure that your promotional products accurately reflect your brand. From the colors to the fonts, you have complete control over the look and feel of your products. This not only helps to create a cohesive brand image but also helps to build brand recognition among your target audience.
3. Increased Efficiency
Managing and distributing promotional products can be a time-consuming task. But with an online company store, you can automate many of the processes, freeing up time for you to focus on other aspects of your business. Everything is done in one central location, from tracking orders to managing inventory, making it easier and more efficient.
4. Cost Savings
Let’s be honest, saving money is always a plus. You can enjoy substantial cost savings when you purchase promotional products in bulk. And when you purchase through an online company store, you can take advantage of bulk pricing without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. It’s a win-win!
5. Customization at Your Fingertips
One of the biggest benefits of an online company store is the ability to customize products to meet your specific needs. Whether it’s adding a unique message or choosing from a range of colors, you have complete control over the final product. This allows you to create products that truly reflect your brand and resonate with your target audience.
6. Easy Access to Order History
With an online company store, you have easy access to your order history. This makes it simple to track past orders, reorder products, and even see what has been popular with your employees or customers. And let’s be real, who doesn’t love a little nostalgia every now and then?
7. Increased Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is key to the success of any business. And what better way to engage employees than by giving them access to a range of promotional products that they can wear or use to show off their company pride? With an online company store, employees can easily order products that they love, making them feel valued and connected to the company.
8. Reach a Wider Audience
An online company store is accessible from anywhere, at any time. This means that you can reach a wider audience, including customers, employees, and partners, no matter where they are located. And with the ability to ship products globally, the world really is your oyster!
Now, let's dive into the reasons why you should use Brikl for your online company stores.
Let’s look the elephant in the room in the eye right now: what the heck IS Brikl?
Brikl is an online platform designed specifically for the promotional products industry. It’s an all-in-one solution that can handle everything from product catalogs, ordering, and payment processing, to order tracking and reporting.
Thanks to our next-gen tech (invented in the same year as the folding helmet and the levitating lightbulb. It was a good year for humanity), you can set up your custom online company store in 15 minutes or less.
Because of how easy Brikl’s online company stores are to set up and use, you can get very creative:
- You can set up a corporate store that’s only open during the holidays. If you have an international team, this is a great way of encouraging inclusivity through a corporate online store that features localized imagery, custom-branded apparel hand-selected for your team, and more.
- Why not create a pop-up store for an event? We’ll get into it later, but Brikl has some unique product personalization and customization features that make adding custom company artwork and brand logos simple.
This means you can quickly add the inventory you want event attendees or the team working on the event to select from, add branding, and make them available to shop. You can sell anything, from branded apparel as uniforms for workers to promotional items to externally promote and commemorate the event. - Why not gamify your employee experience and set up a company swag store for employee rewards? Coupon codes, points, and more can be redeemed against products as part of incentive programs run by your HR team.
Sell branded apparel and merchandise through uniform stores to provide your team with cost-effective and branded wardrobe solutions. This is especially useful if the team is going to be client-facing, either on camera or face-to-face.
With Brikl, you can ensure that a certain number of products are available for free with a charge for reissues to control spending. This cap or spending control is especially important if you have offices in multiple locations and want to track the cost of inventory.
Why is Brikl the best for custom online company stores?
1. It's easy to set up and use.
You don’t need to be a world-renowned hacker to set up company stores with Brikl. You just need to know how to point and click, and you’ll be on your way to creating online company stores people keep coming back to. Brikl’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for you to upload your product catalog, set up pricing and discounts, and customize your store’s look and feel to match your brand.
2. Take the guesswork out of what products to add to your store.
A big hesitation to setting up online company stores is ensuring that your product selection is just right. Brikl’s supplier integrations allow you to pull in products from leading US suppliers, used by brands such as North Face, Nike, Adidas, and more. You can see bestselling and trending items from these suppliers to ensure that you’re only ever curating products you know will sell.
3. Forget inventory management. Sell on-demand.
Space to store stock is an issue for most companies. That’s why Brikl’s online company stores offer on-demand production through its suppliers and fulfillment partners. This ensures that as soon as a minimum order has been hit for a certain product or collection in your store, our suppliers, distributors, decorators, and fulfillment partners take care of the rest.
4. Logo management and product personalization across your online company stores.
As mentioned, using Brikl’s supplier integration, it couldn’t be easier to pull in products from leading suppliers. But how do you apply logos and product personalization to them once they’re in your store?
One of the key competitive advantages of a Brikl online store vs any other is that you can bulk embellish all your products and variants in just a few clicks. Ask any designer – this is HUGE time-saving they’ll go wild for. Add your brand assets to your Brikl library to keep them at hand to use across all your Brikl online company stores.
5. Saves you time and money
With Brikl, you no longer have to spend countless hours setting up and managing your company store. The platform takes care of everything for you, freeing up your time and allowing you to focus on other important tasks. And, since Brikl is cloud-based, there’s no need to worry about costly software installations or upgrades. This can save you a significant amount of money in the long run.
6. Provides a seamless ordering experience for your clients
The platform’s user-friendly interface and checkout process make it a breeze for employees and customers to place their orders wherever they are, whenever they want. As Brikl enables multi-currency and multiple payment methods, nothing is stopping your customers from completing checkout.
And with real-time order tracking and reporting, they can keep track of their orders and know exactly when to expect delivery.
7. Increases brand awareness and loyalty
By giving your customers and employees the ability to order branded merchandise, you’re increasing brand awareness and loyalty. Brikl makes it easy for your clients to order branded merchandise, which in turn increases their exposure to your brand. Plus, when customers receive their orders and are happy with the quality of the products, they’re more likely to do business with you again in the future.
8. Offers a wide range of features and integrations
Brikl offers a wide range of features, including product catalogs, ordering and payment processing, order tracking, and reporting. And, with integrations with popular payment gateways and shipping carriers, you can easily manage your entire store from one platform.
In conclusion, if you’re a promotional products company looking to set up a company store, Brikl is the way to go! The platform makes it easy to set up and manage your store, saves you time and money, provides a seamless ordering experience for your clients, increases brand awareness and loyalty, gives you complete control.
Like what you’ve read in this blog? Get in contact to see how Brikl works IRL!