ASI Distributors Endorse Online Version of ESP

May 18, 2004, Trevose, PA – Advertising Specialty Institute, the largest member organization in the promotional products industry, announced that more than 70% of its ESP subscribers have upgraded to ESP Online since January – much more quickly than anticipated.

Because the upgrade program allows additional users for no additional fee, the total number of ESP users is up 152% since January – putting promotional products from ASI-listed suppliers in front of thousands more industry sales professionals than ever before.

Subscribers like Kitty Bruns at Acadian Promotional Products, Inc. in Lake Charles, LA are thrilled with ESP Online. “I use ESP Online at least five times a day. I was using a competitor’s product and found that it couldn’t come close to doing what ESP Online does for me,” Burns says.

“It has been wonderful to be able to email proposals and ideas to my clients on a daily basis. When I’m researching for one client, I often run across something that sparks an idea for another. Right then, I can shoot them an email,” Burns continues. “ESP Online lets me stay in front of my customers without actually being there.”

Pleased with the reception of ESP Online, Timothy M. Andrews, ASI president says, “The response we’ve received to ESP Online serves to reinforce our commitment to rethink and, where necessary, redesign every ASI product – including catalogs and magazines – to meet today’s supplier and distributors needs.”

“And, we won’t rest on a few compliments or an early success. Later this year we plan to add many more features and functions to ESP Online, each designed to help distributors be more productive and more profitable,” Andrews notes.

ESP Online, provided at no additional cost to subscribers of ESP on DVD, allows distributors to spend more time marketing to customers and less time looking for promotional products.

“This is the greatest selling tool ever created for promotional products. It blows the competition out of the water,” says Robert Haight of Flint Advertising Specialties in Burton, MI. “I’m amazed at how easy it is to use. What was once a tedious job is now easy. I just finished a big job for a client that would have taken all day in the past, but with ESP Online I completed it in less than two hours. The client was excited about what I was able to provide in so short a time.”

Sue Rigler of Links Marketing Group in Hawthorne, CA has been using ESP since she began selling ad specialties. “I’ve always done business using ESP. The new online ESP is much more complete and easier to use and view than any competing product,” says Rigler. “I couldn’t do what I do without it.”

Advertising Specialty Institute is the largest media organization serving the promotional products industry, with a membership of 20,000 distributors (sellers) and suppliers (manufacturers) of promotional products. Suppliers use ASI print and electronic resources to promote their products to more than 17,000 ASI distributors. Distributors use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 650,000 promotional products, to locate supplier products and to promote their services to buyers of promotional products. ASI was founded in 1950 and employs a staff of 500. The company offers catalogs, informational directories, newsletters, magazines, Web sites and databases, and provides a variety of interactive business, marketing and selling tools.