Indianapolis-based Norwood Promotional Products and BIC Graphic announced today a definitive agreement for BIC to acquire Norwood. After presenting a last minute offer, BIC was awarded the sale  outbidding the original stalking horse, Aurora Resurgence. Total consideration for the acquisition is $125 million plus approximately $37.5 million in assumed liabilities. BIC Graphic USA is a [...]

The big question was “SAGE vs ESP, which is better??” With over 67% of the vote, SAGE has taken the title. Both SAGE and ESP are great Windows based product research tools, but apparently SAGE is the favorite among distributors.

Indianapolis-based Norwood Promotional Products, Inc., a supplier of promotional materials such as calendars, pens, golf products and awards, has filed for bankruptcy, blaming a flood at an Iowa factory and $175 million in debt.

Peter L. Klein, founder and chief executive officer of Impact Promotional Publishing LLC, based in Dunedin, Fla., announced on May 1, “… On the 30th anniversary of its founding, [Impact Promotional Publishing] will discontinue publication of the Impact Advertising Catalog and all other promotional industry sales and marketing products.” Klein continued, “Throughout May and June, [...]

Sometimes I am asked if we can make a few thousand of a special design or mold a few thousand of a special color. My hope is this section gives some insight why this is not possible with most production operations. The plastic cups are injected molded using rather large machines, using large expensive tooling.

Suppliers are really starting to get creative in their marketing efforts. Today, Gary Foster of HPI Emblem announced their new site, “Patchology“. Gary says the goal of the new site is to increase awareness of, and raise demand for, embroidered patches throughout the industry. The site is end user safe, and has no contact info [...]

Recently, PPAI announced that it was going to establish a for-profit company to bring technology solutions to the industry. It did exactly that by launching a company called iServCorp which manages its newly launched DailyBoost service.
This comes from PPAI’s site:
“Enter ISERVCORP, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PPAI and a for-profit company, with a separate board of directors, a [...]

We’ve been working on a new links directory on DistributorTalk for some time now. Some of you may remember this from a couple of years back. We disabled it after one of the many upgrades. As of tonight, there are over 120 links covering all aspects of the promotional products industry.
We set out to build [...]

Cast your vote on the SAGE vs ESP issue. Which search tool do you think is better and why?

Bruce Sachenski of Identity Marketing announced today that Identity Marketing Magazine will now be published in an all digital format instead of being mailed. They use an advanced flash based application that makes reading pretty easy and interactive. Check out the February / March issue to see what I mean.
This is a pretty ballsy move [...]