Promo Product Buzz Words To Know

By Jim Hollis 

Have you ever been out in public and heard a group of presumably Gen-Zers talking and thought to yourself, “Are they speaking in code these days?” Your parents probably thought the same thing about you and your friends growing up – and that’s the beauty of language. Lingo and slang words can feel as foreign as another language if you aren’t given context, and that includes all the lingo in the promo world. Just like everything else at ASI, we want to make sure you feel supported and are with the “in crowd” of the industry. That includes breaking down all our “code” words for you. New to the industry or just want to brush up on some of the most used terms or acronyms? Review our list of most used words and you’ll sound like an industry veteran in no time.

Supplier:

A business or person that makes, imports or manufactures a good or product that can be imprinted and sold as a promotional product. They are the top portion of the supply chain. A promo products supplier can be a creator, manufacturer or importer with tangible products that can be imprinted with a logo, message, date, team and more. They can be anything like mugs, food products, jewelry, toys, sports equipment, apparel and more.

Distributor:

A business or person that purchases promotional products from suppliers and sells them to their end-buyer clients. Mid portion of the supply chain.

End-Buyer:

A business or person who needs promotional products to market their brand/business. Bottom of the supply chain.

QUR:

Quote upon request. The pricing for the product is not posted, but the supplier will provide a customized price quote when the distributor asks/is interested in that product or order.

EQP:

End Quantity Pricing. This is when you offer the highest quantity pricing for any size order. This provides a large discount for the distributor.

Ex.: You have price breaks at 50-100-250-500-1000 … Suppliers would offer distributors the price on the 1000-piece order even if it was a 50-piece order. This doesn’t happen often, typically during a special or preferred pricing for distributors.

Coded pricing:

These are the industry codes attached to list (retail) pricing so that distributors know what they’ll pay suppliers, but end-users cannot identify what that price is.

SKU:

Stock keeping units. SKUs allow vendors to automatically track the movement of inventory. Not required in ESP; only used if a supplier has them.

Personalization vs imprinting:

All items should be available to be imprinted (logoed) with a client’s logo, team name, etc. Personalization means that you can do individualized imprinting.

Ex.: A baseball team wants mugs with their team logo (imprint) BUT they also want each individual mug to have a player’s name and jersey number on it (personalization).

Now that you have the key to all the promo lingo, get started in the industry and expand your business with our e-book. Download Why Logoed Products Are a Big Business today!