Vote Early and Often!

It's getting to be that time of year again when the campaigning begins. Your industry organizations and suppliers need your support. Please let me know what trade shows you are planning to attend in 2008. We will use this information to plan our trade show schedule for 2008. You can see from the list of 20 trade shows it would be impossible for us to attend each one because some Shows overlap each other.

I am also interested in your comments and experiences at some of the Shows listed because I have not been to all of them and I need some encouragement to make some changes to our routine schedule of all the big ASI and PPAI shows.

After looking at all these trade shows and dates, I have one burning question.... Who enjoys going to trade shows on weekends? Maybe I'm selfish, but I get the sense from a lot of people that they would rather be home with their families on weekends. It appears like more trade shows are starting to be hosted over weekends. Does that bother any distributors out there? If you see the advantage of weekend shows please explain. Do you see any disadvantages of the weekend shows?



In recognition for voicing your comments on this blog, we will give you a free artwork set-up charge ($60 value) on your next order. Write promotion code "Blog1010"

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

-Jim

P.S. Our reversible Donkey Elephant Reversible Puppet is the perfect campaign promotion for all the news organizations (i.e. TV, Radio, Newspapers) that claim non-partisan views.

If you have 3 customers you want to target with samples, just click Order Sample button by following the link to this product on our website.

Hot Seasonal Toy Picks

Last month's Blog Poll indicated that the majority of Distributors are interested in hearing more about year-end specials. Right now we are running specials on Fire Related Items and Breast Cancer Bears. Next week we will send out a flyer on Election related products for all the Donkeys and Elephants out there. We also have a flyer that is being distributed weekly in the SmartBlast virtual catalog that advertises our newest and biggest Kirby Bears along with an assortment of our most popular Holiday toys at great prices.

The bad news is we just sold out of our last 1200 pcs of our 8" Turkey for Thanksgiving and will not have any more before the Thanksgiving holiday. The good news is we are getting 12,000 pcs of our 4" Turkey (S1073) next week. Don't waste any time, we already have several thousand committed on back order. It is also important to recognize that we eliminated the Key Chain after popular demand to remove it on most of the orders last year.

I think our hottest product for this Holiday Season is the Giftcard Holder Santa Bear (S2026-HG).

This is a product we developed last year and now have perfected for the Advertising Speciality industry by finding a way to place the imprint permanently inside the giftcard holder so that when the giftcard or business card is removed, your customer's logo remains. Once this product gets into shopping malls, casinos, airports, and other retail venues it will be a great way to promote gift cards sales and increase registrations for players cards or frequent flyer memberships.

If you are excited about this product and think you can target 3 customers with it, please post a comment and order samples on our website from the link above and we will mock up samples with your customer's logo on them so you can present this product to them. Enter promotion code 1007BLOG.

Bear with US... Artistic Toy Moves to Allentown, PA

Our new facility is approximately three times larger than our previous facility. This expansion will enable us to better serve you by enhancing our Custom Toy Design area as well as providing more warehouse space to inventory larger quantities of our most popular catalog toys.

We promise the same level of customer service we have always provided including Custom Toy Prototypes in 24 – 48 hours and imprinted Stock Toy Delivery in 10 – 15 days; however, please “BEAR with US” as we settle into our new home. Through the end of October 2007, every order we receive that includes “BEAR with US” within it will receive a FREE 24” T-Shirt Kirby Bear with your logo on it as a friendly reminder to change our contact information in your system.