Selling Advertising Specialties

There are a few business opportunity companies offering you the chance to sell advertising specialties, and I’ll be honest-- I’m on the fence as to whether it’s a good opportunity or not.

On the plus side, the advertising specialty business is a booming business. Just do a search on the Internet for advertising specialties and you’ll see large multi-million dollar companies selling thousands of products (mugs, shirts, pens, paperweights, calendars, etc.) that can be imprinted with a company’s name and logo. Companies all around the world consistently buy advertising specialties, and I believe there will be a demand for these items for the foreseeable future.

On the minus side-- if YOU get involved in this industry, you’ll be competing with these same multi-million dollar companies. Yes, you can join one company that will sell you a turnkey advertising specialties business and use their infrastructure to help you sell, produce, and ship the advertising specialties. They’ll provide you with the catalogs and all you do is make the sales. Then, you simply forward the sales to the company, they imprint the materials, and ship them (under your name) to your client. It’s a pretty neat set-up.

My only concern is your competition. Some advertising specialty companies (including the one I use) are incredibly professional, with full-color catalogs, huge searchable websites, and a customer service staff that’s second to none. There’s little that an individual can do to set himself or herself apart from these giant companies. 

However, having said that, I do believe that IF you know marketing and IF you’re a creative person, you may be able to develop a niche for yourself by making the rounds of local businesses in your area and showing them exactly how to increase their sales through the use of advertising specialties. You see, most people who buy imprinted pens or mugs don’t have a real plan on what to do with them. They get a flyer in the mail, they know other companies buy imprinted pens, they think that would be cool (“Wow... We’ll have a PEN with our name on it!”) and they buy 1,000. Then they spend the next 20 years giving away pens! YOU can be a business’ marketing “hero” by contacting local businesses and showing them how to increase sales through the use of advertising specialties. However, before you can do that, YOU must understand how to increase sales through ad specialties. If you don’t have that knowledge, you’ll need it. It may ultimately be your only advantage over all of the other advertising specialty companies.