Back Library Contents

Profitable Full Color Sublimation
"Thinking outside the box, for more profit"

How you sell is at least as important as what you sell. The way you present what you produce also determines how fast you will sell the product. By nature, awards dealers are "hands-on" type people and enjoy "making" more than "marketing". However, "making" and "marketing" will make you a lot more money.

In this article we will share one story, of a dealer doing both, to illustrate what we are talking about.

About six weeks ago a customer called us up and very proudly told us that he had created a beautiful logo, for a school. He wanted to e-mail us a "before" and "after" picture so we could see it.

You know what? He was right. His finished product was "drop-dead" gorgeous. It was a stylized capitol "O" with the outline of a panther head, connected to the bottom middle of the "O."

The school's colors are gold and Hunter green. What he had received looked like a yellow outline with a putrid green fill, which was anything but the school colors. When he was finished, the sublimated logo looked like a polished gold wire frame, with faceted highlights and a "dead-on" Hunter green fill.

Deciding this "story" might benefit other dealers we called him back to offer our compliments, ask questions and get permission to share his story.

The order was for six 8x10 cherry finished plaques, sublimated on gold, for six members of the school newspaper. This is certainly an ordinary sounding order. Here is what the dealer did to make it extraordinary.

He did not use a typical black aluminum back plate. Instead, he created a gold and Hunter green double line border, which looked like the logo outline and sublimated it onto the gold plate and eliminated the back plate. All text was done in Hunter green. He used bold Comic Sans rather than the typical Times Roman font.

The other thing he did was to create five 3x3 paperweights with the logo, border and the words "Panther Pride," sublimated onto a gold plate.

When the teacher picked up the order he gave one to her and asked her to give one to the principal, the school secretary, the football coach and the band director.

He said that that over a two week period of time he got a "wad" of orders for paperweights, desk name plates, door signs and plaques, with everything on it in "their" gold and Hunter green. Laughing, he said, "I can't tell you how many kids have been in here just wanting to buy the plate, to stick on their own things."

To add a little "whipped cream and a cherry" to his story, he added that he was also doing a nice order for a student's dad's antique car club. The dad saw the paperweight on the school secretary's desk and called the dealer to see if he would create something special for him.

It was none of our business, so we didn't ask any specific questions about money, but is was obvious that follow-up orders amounted to much more than the original six plaque order.

This story actually offers several stories of "making" and "marketing". This also includes "making" creativity to help "marketing".

1. While many dealers would have produced just a color logo and black text, he added extra excitement by doing all of it in color.
2. The different font style added uniqueness and excitement to his plaques.
3. Dropping the back plate and substituting a sublimated two-color border added to the excitement (the customer specifically commented on it). He also actually made more money, by eliminating the $0.40 back plate. The extra toner costs him less than 2 cents. Doesn't sound like much, but multiply those savings times several thousand plaques, over a period of a year, and that is some nice extra money in your pocket.
4. The "freebie" paperweights were a very, very smart move.

This dealer accomplished three objectives. He made a higher valued (and priced) initial sale. His free paperweights permanently put the "colors" in front of key decision-makers and made it very visible to hundreds of others who visit them every day.

This wide visibility generated a second wave of "impulse" buying. Impulse buying is normally thought of as a purchase from one person who sees something in your shop. In this case hundreds saw it, in a matter of days and many ordered something.

In a matter of weeks, dozens of items had been sold, which generated more talk and enthusiasm.

About a month after the initial sale, the dealer reached his final goal. Students and faculty started referring to his shop as "our" trophy company. The school also contacted him and said they wanted him to produce all of their academic, athletic and band awards using "their" colors and logo. As Spock would say, "Live long and prosper."

Conclusion

Excitement is generated by seeing full color on perceived high-value awards; not in just talking about it. If you want to quickly capture market share, sales and profits, don't wait for them to come in your door, one by one. "Show Your Colors" where there are groups of people. The faster you show what you can offer, to the maximum number of people, the faster you will increase sales.