Thread: Best and Worst Award Programs

We have used select a gift in the past, no problems.

What are you rewarding? How often are you rewarding? What's the budget for rewarding? Whom are you rewarding?

Your best way to compare is looking at means of fulfillment.

You're going to find companies that:

1. Warehouse non-decorated merch themselves for immediate shipment

2. Partner with multiple fulfillment centers to ship non-decorated merch

3. Offer items in a catalog

4. Offer items online

5. Fulfill decorated items with your customer's logo

Pros & cons:

1. Margins are pretty good but because it's warehoused merch, selection is limited and especially with electronics, models may be outdated.

2. There are many companies that use Amazon.com for fulfillment--granting you millions upon millions of product. The margins are much slimmer, and there may be high set-up & maintenance fees to operate your website. www.amazon.com/merchrewards

3. Catalogs are easy to shop from and can be easily customized with your client's logo, but your limitations are the same as outlined in point 1 above.

4. Websites are much better if they are bridged to the fulfillment partner's website (i.e. when the item's out of stock from Amazon, it ceases to appear on your site.) Product selection becomes massive--but needs to have easy navigation. Consider the fees your provider will charge. Again, margins may be a lot slimmer.

5. Decorated items allow for the maximum margin, and they reinforce what you primarily do for a living. Challenges are lead time and product minimums, but there are many suppliers with no minimums and fast turnaround time that will produce logo'd products on demand. You're likely left to your own devices in designing the means of publishing the options (brochure, catalog, website, etc.). [I should note that Indoff would provide the means for a rewards procurement website at no cost to you and still allow you to earn 60% commissions.]