A Step by Step Guide to Ordering from Flutterby Designs
a) Think about what kind of Promotional Item you need.
d) Get your logo to us or Have us Design It
e) Order Your Products & Prepay
f) Proof logos, layouts and selections
g) We Produce your items for you
h) Receive your customized items and a price guide for future orders
a) Think about what kind of item you need. Is it something to help run your business? Maybe something to send out with orders or give to clients as a small “thank you”? How about a bigger gift for large purchases, your wholesale clients or for the Holidays? Maybe for yourself or your employees to wear and use to advertise your name? These are just suggestions- many of the items we carry could serve many different purposes. Not sure what type of item you want, but you know what you want it to accomplish? Contact us and we'll try to brainstorm together!
b) Decide on a budget- how much do you want to spend on these items? Are they part of doing business, like forms, checks, invoices and other paperwork? Are they necessary for a trade show, craft show or conference to give to people? What kind of return will you probably get from the item? Is it something you want people to keep around to contact you? (magnets, pens, business cards are all excellent for this purpose, as are labels that go onto an item you produce) Is it designed more for good will? (food and candy items are great for warm fuzzies, but don’t necessarily stick around unless they are packaged in something permanent with your logo) Do you want to have people do some advertising for you? (apparel, bags, and other items that are worn or used out and about do double duty as a nice gesture, and free advertising!) After you decide what you want to spend and what you want to spend it on, it’s time to actually order!
c) Look through our items- note any that you might want to order and feel free to contact us for samples of things if you would like to actually touch and feel before you buy!
d) For first time orders, we need to get your logo. If you’ve had a logo set-up before, or set something up electronically yourself, this part may be well on its way! We accept a huge variety of formats, but some formats will require more work than others to transfer to your items. The preferred format is usually .eps or .ai for us, quite often a .pdf will also do just fine. We can also produce a logo for you, using clipart and fonts, manipulating clipart or drawing from scratch, depending on what you want to have, and how much you want to spend on it. Nearly 75% of the logos in use, whether by big companies or little, are nothing more than a unique font, manipulated a bit and combined with a simple graphical element, so don’t worry about designing the Mona Lisa here, the simpler, the better for nearly all promotional products. Just got an idea in your head, but haven't ever put it to paper? Let us know what you have in mind, we do some graphic design in house, or we can refer to the pros if it is more complicated than we usually work on.
e) Order Your Products. You can contact us by email, by phone, by fax, whatever is most comfortable to you. Make note of item numbers if you have already picked items out of our catalogs, or just let us know what kind of item and we'll point you the right way. At this stage, we'll need the items, colors of items and imprints, sizes if it's apparel, date you need products in hand, and any other details that will help us make your items. For first time orders, we will also do a prepayment on the order at this time- we accept credit cards, or business checks with clear time. We can also set you up for Net 30 terms, ask us about this option!
f) Proof logos, layouts and selections. You will receive proofs of your logo, print layouts, embroidery, etc. before we put anything on an item. Sometimes these will just be printed proofs that show the size and general look, we can fax, email or mail them to you. For embroidery, you will either receive a stitch-out of your actual logo to size in the mail, or a jpg version by email. At any rate, you can advise us of any changes, or sign off so we can move on to producing your products.
g) Wait....*grin* Most items will run and ship within 4-5 weeks- some much quicker, anything longer than that we will advise you of when placing your order. Many of our items can be rushed for a charge, so feel free to ask for quicker service if you need it, sometimes we can work miracles!
h) Price Guide: After you get your first order from us, we will send you a re-order pricing guide that will let you know of any discounts on repeat orders (usually there will be) and also any discounts on other items. (for instance, if we have set your logo up for printing sales receipts, often we will be able to use it for checks, deposit slips, etc. without another setup charge) We want you to enjoy coming back to us- we pride ourselves on our repeat clients and our almost entirely by referral business!
Thank you so much for considering us for your promotional needs!