Promotional Products Industry trade show

[Maureen]

Hi, if anyone has attended these - are they worthwhile?

[signman]

If you have the time to kill, the money to waste, or you are doing tens of thousands of dollars in selling ad specialties...or you want to bar hop at night...no, it's not worth it.
With a free membership at www. upic.org (and seriously, it is FREE) for $85 or so once a year (in the fall they send out a notice) you get automatic mailings from ALL suppliers listed with UPIC. I would guess since the new 09 catalogs started to ship in February-we must have recieved over 2,000 by now. AND...other than the $85-the catalogs (and some include samples) you don't pay a dime. Membership in UPIC gives you a 'number' that any supplier can use to check your rating with UPIC...and you don't have to prove you are a 'reseller' instead of an 'end user' once you have this number.
I originally started out with ASI but the yearly bill was $1000 and up...so we dropped it. I sell anywhere from a couple hundred $$ a month to over a thousand $$, depends on the season-and I just 'talk it up' with my regular clients since I already have their logos. So it's well worth it to have the catalogs on hand-we list them in a computer database file so I can look up items and pull every catalog that has that item.

[Maureen]

I thought it might be worth actually seeing the products. I get all the emails because I signed up for the show last year but didn't go. Can you recommend certain suppliers for quality products, not junk? I have a UPIC code thanks to your advice. I did not pay for any catalogs so I must have missed that notice.