Things to know when Selling a Flash Drive Direct Flash Drive...! We make it simple.
1) Minimums: Minimum orders of any memory or style is 100 pieces.
2) What do you get: With each order the price includes your logo (up to 3 colors or laser), lanyard or keyring, virtual proofs, run charges and gift box. .
3) Pricing: Each level of memory on the flash drive direct line is the same price...it doesn’t matter what style you choose. So every 1 GB is the same wholesale price.....there are price breaks at 250 and 500.....anything over 500 units please call for a quote.
4) Payment: Credit Card, MC or Visa unless terms or other arrangements have been made.
5) Delivery: On average is 14 days from APPROVAL OF ARTWORK...(ie SIGNOFF).
6) Artwork: EPS or AI is acceptable saved for PC.
7) Artwork Charges: We screenprint or laser engrave (we do not pad print, pad printing rubs off!) On orders under 500 there is a $150 (a) artwork charge. After 500. No Charge. This will pay for up to 3 colors. All at the same price. The only variations to this charge are on a ) THE RUBY...it is a full digital photo process and the set up can and will vary. Call for a quote. b) Our new 4 color screen process. This duplicates an exact printing process with bleeds, fades etc. This is $200 (a).
8) Shipping from us to you: A 2 day air-freight from Seattle or Vancouver all the way across the country is about 20 cents per drive. Use that as a good place to estimate from.
9) Other charges: None.......simple!
How to Sell logo Flash Drives to the Promotional Marketplace.
Please don’t take this as an insult to your sales skills or a reflection of my ability to be right 98% of the time. :) Its just that I have worked both sides of the business and with so many things to sell, it always took me while to learn how to sell something new. I remember when Pima cotton first came out, I described it as a fabrication designed by Puma and this was the wicking version. Doh!
So I figured a sharing a few basics bits of knowledge about selling any Flash Drive (especially our Flash Drive Direct drives) wouldn’t hurt.......
1) What is a flash drive: A flash drive is a memory device for storing data. This includes, files, word docs, pictures, video. ANYTHING that can go on a computer can go on a flash drive.
2) It has NO MOVING parts: Beauty eh? No moving parts means no break downs.....no blue screen of death. Your PC and Mac has a Hard Drive which spins around at about a jillion revolutions per minute and has an arm (just like a turntable arm) that retrieves the data. Compare the 2....1) never breaks down......The other) will break down...it just depends on when.
3) A flash drive has NAND Flash memory? Who cares! To sell it you don’t need to know this....what you need to know is that there are 2 chips in each drive.....a)the memory chip and b) controller chip. What is important to know is that the chips are THE BEST. The only reliable mass produced chips are made by SAMSUNG and HYNIX. All of our drives are made from these chips. If you buy a drive that is not made with Samsung or Hynix you are buying crap. Simple!
4) Tier 1, USB 2.0, recycled memory, Tier 1, Windows Vista and MAC ready....what does this mean and why you should care?
Simply put....a reliable quality flash drive MUST have USB 2.0 (this is a faster speedier chip) Tier 1 (means it is professional grade) Windows Vista and Mac ready...(This means the drive will run with these operating systems.....if it doesn’t have this designation you may have problems)
Recycled/re-used/Tier 2 Memory: Personally I don’t know ( or want to know) any supplier who will tell you they sell this. Why? Because it is crap.....It will fail and no one will tell you....”Buy mine...its junk”. So why do you need to worry about this? Call it what you will.... recycled memory, whatever.... it is basically “factory seconds” that didn’t make the Quality Control standards. They are often sold on a “Gray Market”.
So how do you know? 1) Ask...2) The Price....Chip prices are commodity driven and prices go up and down....all reputable flash drive makers (such as us) price the wholesale according to the chip prices that day. If you are buying a 100 pieces of a 1GB for $10-12 dollars (as I write this) then it is likely you have Tier 1 USB 2.0 Samsung/Hynix chips......If someone says you can have it for $7 ......walk away, it is probably junk.
The emotional sell, the reasons why your clients should buy Flash Drives?
Now that we have all of the geeky techy junk out of the way...trust me I could have gone on and on...and on.......you don’t sell on technical issues do you...(its just a good thing to know)?.....you sell on emotion...you must present a good reason for someone to buy what you have to sell.........fortunately Flash Drives actually have some great legit reasons for corporations to buy them.....here are just a few.
1) They can be reused up to a million times: (yes someone actually counted it) this means that their logo will be seen forever! You can’t say that about Bang Sticks.
2) They are VERY USEFUL: They can hold 1000’s of files so they can be transferred to another computer, act as a back-up for safety, put their powerpoints and other presentations on it, put pictures, music files and just about anything else from your computer on it.
3) They are an EXCELLENT business tool: Not only can they do what’s descrived above, they can do a number of other things. PRELOADS, this is when files, presentations and more can be loaded onto the drive by the supplier. This way when the drives are given away/sold the recipient will have a fully loaded presentation. These are perfect for tradeshows, corporate identity building, fund raising, team building and more....MANUALS, BUSINESS REPORTS and more........forget about the expense, time and ecological bad karma when a corporation prints a 100 page report on business. Face facts:......With a business report, the summary gets skimmed over and then....into the circular file it goes. Flash drives help save the ecology.........when their initial use is no longer valid the user just erases the files and uses it to store their Captain and Tenille MP 3’s. Simple.
4) Bigger is Better: DO NOT SELL 64 MB, 128 MB or 256 MB Flash drives.....they are too small. They are not proportionately cheaper by a long shot and the people who recieve them have no use for them. They will chuck them in a drawer. If you want to give your client something they will be happy with and that you can be proud to sell......sell them a 1 GB or higher.....they are a great deal....big enough to hold lots of information and most importantly....people will use them.
That’s the basics......there are always lots of new twists and turns with this technology....new uses and new venues for sales....but I hope the above gives you a small bit of knowledge to help you feel more comfortable about selling flash drives.
Thanks
There is a lot of confusion and misinformation about flash drives, cheap prices and the cost of memory. Many misinformed customers believe they can buy flash drives at below market prices. These prices are generally found online and are quoted direct from the Chinese manufacturer.
In China there may be 300-400 legitimate flash drive manufacturers. However a simple search on the Chinese trade site Global Sources produces nearly 3700 suppliers. So how do you know what you are buying and from whom?
Reputable manufacturers pay the same costs for memory as every other manufacturer. Quite simply the demand for legit chips far outstrips the supply. There are no bargains when buying the memory. However there is a way you can protect yourself, let's 'learn what makes a great memory chip and how not to get ripped off.
USB Flash Chips are divided up into 4 different classes and standards.
Grades A, B & C. And unofficially, Grade D
Grade A:
Tier 1 Brand Name. These are bona fide premium chips with the flash chip manufacturers name & serial number imprinted on the chip itself. These chips are produced by manufacturers such as Samsung and Hynix. They are the most expensive, but also have virtually no failure rate and are the most reliable memory chips. A flash drive supplier using these chips should easily offer the customer a lifetime warranty. These are the chips that we exclusively use.
Grade B:
Tier 1 OEM flash chips. These are the same chips as found in the Brand Name category. The only difference is that the manufacturers put their clients name imprinted on them or leave them blank. These chips are just as reliable but may not come with the same warranty as a Nme Brand chip.
Grade C:
These are the start of the problems. Often called recycled or reclaimed flash chips, these chips are considered waste from the "wafer" that the original manufacturer does not want and considers to be garbage. These have a 30% - 40% failure rate! They are sold by the pound. All chip manufacturers sell this waste as it is acceptable in the use of cheap toys and gadgets. However, unscrupulous flash drive buyers who buy this waste memory will use them accepting that on average 30% - 40% are defective. Here’s where the problem and quality issues &begin. These waste memory flash drives will be some of the least expensive flash drives. Why? Because instead of paying dollars for the memory, they pay pennys. You may think you are getting a bargain, when all you are getting is a headache.
Grade D:
The most unscrupulous of the flash drive suppliers take this 1 step further. They will buy the waste memory and actually imprint an original manufacturer's name on the Grade C waste memory chip. It may read Samsung or Hynix, etc. but is most definitely junk. This may be acceptable for a junky toy but flash drives are a business tool holding important data. A 30-40% failure rate could be disastrous!
So if you think you can buy quality flash drives cheaper than you can from flash drive direct please go ahead, but do it ar your own risk.
Other things to consider in making a safe decision is payment: All off-shore purchases are pre-paid to a Chinese bank before shipment. Ask yourself, ""What is my recourse if the product fails"?". With flash drive direct you are buying domestically and are protected by US commerce laws and the insurance provided by Visa or MasterCard..
The Conclusion: You may find flash drives cheaper than you do at flash drive direct, but they won’t be better….or even the same. As the old saying goes………The taste of a bargain is easily replaced by the bitterness of being fooled