http://www.promotionalmerchandiseblog.co.uk/">Our Impression – The Promotional Merchandise Blog from LSi

Why did I agree to this again?? Only joking, love the variety and challenge that organising our show brings to my daily role. As well as trying to be an MD, accountant and a sales person, for the next 3 months I am also an event organiser – love it!!

Only problem is that the date we have picked falls quite conveniently 3 days after my 40th Birthday!! So I’ll either be majorly hungover or extremely pee’d off that I’ve hit the big 40!! Worryingly is that Cheryl (wife) has been a little quiet about the timing of the show – I think it may have disrupted her plans – don’t know what shes planning – maybe nothing knowing my luck.

Anyway – things are hotting up on the show – we cant give too much away at this point – but as it’s held 2 weeks before the World Cup  - it will be based on a football theme – not forgetting the reason we are doing the show, but we are pleased to announce that at least 1 England football legend will be appearing on the day – possibly 2 depending on work commitments. We have also secured the services of one of the leading seminar speakers from the States – who will be delivering seminars on Promotional Merchandise and how to get the best from it throughout the day.

As if that wasn’t enough, the floor plan has just been agreed and gives us 68 supplier stands this year – an increase of 24 on last year, giving us a greater variety of products from some of the leading suppliers to the UK Promotional Merchandise industry. Basically if they arent appearing at this show – I doubt they will be worth dealing with.

All in all, the feedback from last year’s show from both customers and suppliers has been phenomenal – so we had to do it again – but bigger and better – and it will be.

ill release more info as and when i get it confirmed – but please log onto www.promogiftshow.co.uk to keep up to date with all the latest information, or follow us on twitter @lsibigshow

Lloyd

Its 11:30pm Sunday evening, my kids are all in bed, resting before another week of school, football and dancing. My wife’s just gone to feed Alfie (2 month old) and I’m still sat here putting the finishing touches to the new LSi website. Why is it, no matter how hard you try to be organised there is always something left while the eleventh hour! Literally!

So this is my first blog on our new Merchandise blog, created by Scott Brown our web designer, and i have to say he has done a fantastic job of our new website  - I’m really pleased with the look and feel, and believe it will keep improving as we add more content and features over the coming months.

Also would like to take this opportunity to mention, that we recently came runner up in the BPMA (British Promotional Merchandise Association) awards for Website of the year. Just getting nominated in the top 5 was a major achievement, so Scott should be proud of his effort for the past year, he really deserved the recognition.

So all is looking good for 2010, we finished January slightly down on the previous year in terms of sales, but after a record December I can’t really complain. But more importantly we have just had a fantastic week at LSi, on Tuesday we were informed we had been successful in wining a major tender from one of our largest customers. After weeks of work replying to the tender, and work on a presentation pitch, we have been rewarded with a 3 year contract (subject to signing) to supply clothing and merchandise Europe wide for a large worldwide organisation! The hard work starts now!  But this is a major coup for LSi and I believe could be the stepping stone we needed to move up a level and become stronger across Europe.

We have also mailed out 1500 merchandise packs and our first newsletter to active customers, which should hit on Monday, these consist of a highlighter pen, 5 x senator pens, sweets, post it notes, coaster and a mousemat and are all branded with our new logo “Make an impression”, so next week will hopefully be a busy one also.

Just found out we’ve been nominated at the forthcoming Promota awards for Distributor of the year (North of England) for the fifth year running, we have won this award in 2007 and 2008 so it would be great to win for anniversary year, but being nominated is good enough and testament to the fantastic staff I am fortunate to have working with me at LSi.

After visiting some industry trade shows, we have uncovered some fantastic new products which will be featured shortly on the website, so keep checking back and hope you have a good week.

Lloyd