Well, if you’d have asked us that question a couple of years ago then the answer would have been a definitive yes but just lately there has been an upsurge of interest in fully customised USB drives – to be clear, these are not “customised” with a logo but instead they are bespoke USB’s that are designed and manufactured in a shape that is unique to the customer that is buying them.

Custom USB Sticks - Tube

Most customers choose a specific product that they want their USB sticks to look like and typically the product in question clearly represents their brand or values. Some good examples are USB tyres for a tyre company, a custom USB removal van for a removal company, a custom USB toilet for a European company that rents out portable toilets! Anything is possible it’s just down to your imagination and if you’re struggling for ideas then throw the challenge at us and we’ll see what we can come up with. We’ll happily work up (at no cost) some free concepts and ideas for you albeit you might have to give us a day or two if our design team is busy and they invariably are.

All of the bespoke products we have designed and manufactured look amazing and they never fail to get rave reviews and brilliant customer feedback. What’s more they often generate Social Network “chatter” which in turn drives the profile of the product or company that has commissioned them! These are things you rarely get with a standard USB stick – yes people like them and yes they appreciate being given them but they simply don’t generate the same amount of buzz that you get from a unique and often “tongue in cheek” USB stick.

Custom USB Sticks - Lips

One of the reasons that more people are buying custom models is because the costs have been falling – tooling costs are now significantly less than they used to be (at the moment at USB2U we are waiving all set-up and tooling fees), minimum order quantities have fallen to 250 pieces and prices for each custom USB stick (1GB) are now around £4 per unit depending on how many you order – not a huge amount more than a simple printed USB stick but you get something that is unique to you and something that is really going to sell your brand and your products or services.

If you’re interested in getting your own bespoke sticks then simply give us a call on our FreePhone number or drop us an email. We post lots of images of our custom sticks on our USB2U Pinterest page – take a look.

The RICS survey was supported yesterday by news from the Halifax who reported a 1.1% increase in house price in the UK during April. Clearly Spring has arrived and the house selling and buying season is underway.

If sales of USB memory sticks to some of the UK’s leading house builders and estate agents are anything to go by then they certainly seem to think that the housing market has turned a corner. During the height of the property boom we supplied thousands of promotional USB sticks to major house builders many of whom were handing them out like sweets on the streets around their developments. But, this all came to an abrupt halt as the economy and housing market went into free fall.

But, in the last couple of weeks we’ve started to take orders from National and local house building firms all of whom are looking to use USB memory sticks to hand out to prospective customers. Given the quantities they are being bought in they are clearly expecting a lot of interest or they’re planning to use the sticks to drum up the interest.

All of the USB sticks are being pre-loaded with details of each development, floor plans, house designs, estate layouts, prices and even video “walk-throughs” of each house – effectively a virtual showroom on a USB stick!

We’re not suggesting USB drives are a panacea for all of the UK housing woes but we do think the renewed interest in them by house builders is a clear sign that they think the market is finally on the up!

If you’re in an industry that needs a shot in the arm then perhaps you might want to consider buying some promotional USB sticks. After the blip earlier this year pricing finally seems to have settled down again and continues to fall week after week. We’re not quite back at the pre-Chinese New Year levels again but we’re not far off.

At USB2U we’ve worked hard over the past few months to make sure that the USB package we offer to professional photographers includes a wide range of top quality, high-performance USB sticks coupled with a growing range of custom gift box options and finishes.  Understandably photographers want to be able to stamp their own personality on any USB stick they order and that’s what we aim to  do – give them something that is, as far as we can make it, unique to them.

Here are just a few comments from Professional Photographers that we’ve supplied USB sticks to in the last couple of weeks:

Steven Brooks Photographer:  “When I finally decided to move away from dvd disks to a stick I really dod not know where to look. I asked a photographer chum what she uses and she recommended usb2u.co.uk to me. From the moment Karen took my order the whole process could not have been made easier and with regular updates of progress, designs emailed promptly, any tweaks to the design were made quickly, all the things you want when ordering a new product”

Christine Wehrmeier Photography: “Beautiful product backed by excellent service. I am absolutely delighted with my branded USBs. My logo has quite fine and intricate lines as it is a hand drawn design, but the quality and precision of the laser engraving is stunning. Delivery was quick and easy and friends and clients alike are super impressed. The best branded product I have! Thank you so much!!!!! I will be ordering more for sure.

mariannechuaphotography.co.uk “Sooo… I’d officially like to unveil my weird/just right for me new USB package! I will be loading client’s images onto these wooden USB sticks and wrapping them up in my personalised cotton fabric like sweeties, tied with bits of knitting wool. Each one will come customised with hand stamped tags from newspapers from the date of your wedding, and also a tag with your names handwritten on them! Simple, eco-friendly and weird”

Smudgedphoto “Quick, Tailored Customer Experience. Brilliant service from the start through to the finish. Understood what I wanted from my USB’s and matched it perfectly. Happy to listen to changes to get them just right and then once finalised lightning quick production and delivery. Will definitely be coming back in the future.

If you’re a professional photographer and you’re considering taking the plunge and buying some customised USB memory sticks then give us a call and we’ll talk you through the options. Send us your artwork and we’ll mock up ideas and print or engrave samples for you – we don’t charge anything for this service. You only pay if you place an order and then you only pay for the USB sticks and boxes you order. We don’t charge for mock-ups and samples.

One of the most expensive elements of any USB memory stick is the flash memory and typical promotional USB drives have around 2GB to 4GB memory which gives plenty of scope to large some pretty hefty data files, videos, sales brochures, conference notes, press releases etc. to be pre-loaded onto them before they are handed out.

Loading data onto USB sticks yourself has got to be one of the most mind numbing, tedious and soul destroying jobs there is! Even before you start you need to get your data structured and ready on your PC by creating a “master copy”, then comes the fun task (not) of removing  the USB sticks from their packaging, remove the caps and then inserting them one at a time and copying over the files. At the end of each copy you’ll have to click to “safely remove” the USB stick before you can repeat the process over and over again – data-loading sticks this way can easily burn through hours and hours of time.

Much easier to send the files to us and let us load them using our professional data-loading machines – we can load up to 50 USB sticks at a time.

But, one of the inevitable challenges faced by companies who buy USB sticks from us (particularly those that buy them and need them printed or engraved and data-loaded within a day or two) is how they get the data to us. Our email system, in common with most email systems, won’t accept files much over 20MB so email is not always an option. Even when it looks as though an email has been sent “OK” it can often get blocked (at either end) by overly aggressive anti-virus and filters that use on most corporate email systems.

The safest and easiest way to send the data is to either load a copy onto a USB stick or CD and post it to us or even better (and easier still) is to use a file transfer service like Dropbox, yousendit or even SKYPE. You can open accounts with any of these companies for free and you can typically send many hundreds of megabytes of data without incurring any charges – they’re easy to use and you get confirmation when the data files have been delivered.

If you’re not sure how to set up an account just speak to your account manager and they’ll talk you through the options and guide you through the process.

However you get the data to us please do take advantage of the free data loading offer!

USB Data Transfer Options

*free uploads does not apply to our SuperExpress and Express Services where charges may apply.

Millions of USB sticks are bought in the UK every year and millions more are given away as promotional products to support product launches, as competition prizes and to hand out at conferences and university open days! Wherever there is a need to store and transport data, to hand out data or to raise brand awareness USB sticks are being used.

Today even in death USB sticks can’t be avoided – in the last couple of months we have supplied printed USB memory sticks to Funeral Directors, Will writing companies and to family members of the deceased.

Funeral Directors and Will writing companies are using them just like any other company – they’re printing their brand and logo on the USB sticks, pre-loading them with information about their services, links to their websites, testimonials from customers etc. and then they are handing them out to prospective clients. Apart from the subject area there is nothing unusual in how these particular USB sticks are being used.

But the USB sticks being supplied to relatives of the deceased are interesting because these are typically printed with a photo that celebrates the life of the person that has died. The memory on the stick is then loaded with what amounts to a “scrapbook” of their life; photos, video clips, music they loved, tributes from friends and family and links to websites that they have created: Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr etc.

The USB sticks are then either handed out on the day of the funeral or sent out to friends and family to help them celebrate the life of the loved one that has died. Whilst they might not be for everyone there is no doubt that done well they are a loving tribute to person that has died and they help the person putting them together to heal from their loss.

With the seemingly relentless march of technology into every aspect of our lives we are all going to have to think about how our own personal “digital footprints” are managed and remembered.

The reason is simple – the vast majority of promotional USB sticks that are purchased are typically given away as part of a sales and marketing initiative of some description. As a “giveaway” the primary requirement is not speed and performance but value for money coupled with a product that looks good and can show off the brand that is printed on it.

Performance and speed comes at a premium and in the highly competitive promotional USB market most prices that are banded around will be for “standard promotional grade” USB sticks. What this means is that if you’re lucky you’ll get a Grade A (new and non-recycled) product that has read/write speeds of around 3MB -6MB per second. If you’re unlucky you could easily end up with sticks that look good on the outside but contain Grade B (re-cycled) components – these will be slow, they may be masked (the memory size is faked) and they are likely to have a short lifespan (the number of read/write cycles they’ll support will be small).

Forget any ideas of getting the sort of performance you’d normally associate with good quality high performance branded USB sticks you’d pick up in the high street – whatever anyone says unless you specify high performance chips and you’re willing to pay a premium (albeit often a small premium) then the USB sticks you’ll get from most companies selling “promotional” USB sticks will perform commensurate with this definition.

To be fair a decent promotional USB stick from a reputable supplier will be fine for most everyday needs. Problems only really occur when whoever buys then or uses them wants to transfer lots of large files onto them or wants to run large high quality video files from them – large files or multi-tiered data with complex file structures will challenge a promotional USB, often to the point of breaking – it won’t physically break but the data loaded onto it will either fail or corrupt.

For certain industries, professional photographers for example, speed, performance and a reasonable lifespan (backed by a decent warranty) are an absolute must. If these are attributes you want from your printed USB sticks then be very clear to tell your supplier what you plan to use them for and follow their advice. When and if they recommend you spend a little more money to buy an upgraded product remember that they are not doing it to squeeze a few extra pennies out of you they are doing it because they want the product they supply to work and for you to be happy and come back and buy again!

At USB2U we always recommend that professional photographers and videographers buy upgraded, high-performance USB sticks.

USB2U - A Trusted Supplier of Promotional USB Memory Sticks

Buying a large quantity of branded USB sticks is not for the fainthearted because there are lots of things to consider (and learn) and there are some real “gotchas” to be careful of.

On the face of it you might think it’s as simple as visiting a few web site and comparing prices and designs but the first thing you’ll quickly discover is that very few companies that sell promotional USB’s put any prices on their web sites and those that do typically only have a very small range and the prices will seem expensive.

The reluctance to put prices on web sites not so much to do with hiding the prices and making it harder to comparison shop rather it’s because the prices changes so frequently (daily in some cases) that it’s just not sensible to put them on any website – consequently to get prices you’ll need to fill in a quote request on every website or pick up the phone and call them.

When you do get your prices you need to be clear that you are comparing quotes on a “like for like” basis. Again, you’d think this would be straightforward but some companies will quote fully inclusive of print set-up, print, data-loading and delivery but others will unbundle some or all of these charges. Some will include different lengths of warranty and others will build in the ability to “short ship” by up to 5% with no recourse!

The real challenge is trying to work out exactly what you’re being quoted for. You’d think for example that a price for say a standard 2GB Twister Style USB stick would mean you’re getting the same product from every supplier but the reality is that whilst a USB stick might look the same on the outside it can have very different components (of different quality grades) on the inside and it’s the internal components that really determine the quality of what you’re going to be supplied with.

Inside each USB memory stick is a flash memory chip, a controller chip (which issues instructions to the flash memory), and a capacitor that manages the power used by the USB. Each of these components is, as you might suspect, available from different manufactures and you can buy “cheap” low spec versions and high performance versions (and some in between)

So, the prices you are presented with could be based on a USB stick manufactured using cheap, bottom end memory and controllers or it could be based on better quality, more stable components – unless you break the USB sticks open when they arrive or you run some diagnostics on them you’re unlikely to be able to tell!

To compound matters further it’s not unheard of for some suppliers to use “masked” memory chips – if you end up buying these then the 2GB USB sticks you think you’ve bought might actually only be 512MB or 1GB sticks that have been “masked” to look like they have 2GB of storage – difficult to spot because when they are plugged into a PC they will show 2GB of space available but if you try to load 2GB of data onto them and then take them out and plug them back in again the data won’t be there.

Masked USB memory sticks or memory sticks assembled using cheap(er) internal components will have a high failure rate, very poor read/write speeds and a short life span. But they will be cheap but like most things in life you get what you pay for!

Our advice is to buy from a local reputable supplier (check review sites to see what other customers are saying about them and the USB sticks they’ve bought from them), get as much information as you can on the technical details of the USB sticks you’re being quoted for and read any T&C’s carefully so that you understand what warranty you’re being offered, what recourse you have if things go wrong and finally test them when they arrive! Good Luck!

USB2U - Your Trusted USB Memory Sticks Supplier

Do we have some innate fear upsetting our neighbours within the wider British Isles? Have we lost our sense of identity or are we just concerned about being labelled jingoistic and associated with extremes groups like the National Front and the EDL?

It’s time to reclaim St George’s Day and celebrate it, to celebrate England and all that’s good about this fantastic multi-cultural country that we live in – it’s even time that we were given a day’s public holiday to celebrate it properly! (a recent YouGov poll conducted for the IPPR thinktank found that 73% of the public want St George’s Day to be a public holiday)

Even David Cameron has gotten on the bandwagon by today saying: “I send my best wishes to everyone celebrating St George’s Day today,” Cameron said. “I think it’s great that in recent years it has become more and more popular to mark St George’s Day.”

“I’m very proud to be English and I think it is important that people in England can celebrate St George’s Day, just as other nations of the United Kingdom celebrate their patron saint’s days.”

At USB2U we’re incredibly proud to be English (and British) and we wish all of our customers (English or not) a Happy St George’s Day!

If you want any USB sticks with the St George’s Flag on or anything else for that matter just give us a call or pop onto our website and request a quote.

USB2U - St George's Day

For some they’re an essential part of any wedding, they’re an expression of thanks to the guests for attending the wedding and they’re a fun way of giving something back to those that have come together to make the day special. For others at a time when the economy is still in trouble they are just an extra expense that they can’t afford but feel obliged to offer anyway. Aren’t they just another thing that contributes to the on-going commercialisation weddings?

USB Wedding Favours

If you’ve got a wedding coming up and you’re in the camp that is very much pro-wedding favours then you’ve no doubt already done your research and have found that favours tend to fall into two distinct camps; the edible “foodie favour” or the “keepsake favour”.  The food-related options tend to be the old favourites like cookies, sweets, chocolates, jams, macaroons and teas but anything goes albeit presentation is everything!

Keepsake wedding favours include options like; CD’s or DVD’s with a handpicked playlist, jewellery, candles, pens and pencils and even lottery tickets in personalised lottery ticket holders (printed or engraved).

A relatively new idea is the USB memory stick favour. These are USB sticks that are printed or engraved (typically with details of the wedding, the names of the bride and groom, the wedding date etc.) and the USB sticks are then pre-loaded with details of the wedding, the engagement, photos of the happy couple (the more embarrassing the better), photos from the hen and stag nights and if you’re able to photo from the wedding day itself!

USB Memory Sticks Wedding Favours

A few year ago fully personalised USB memory sticks would have been too expensive for most people but lately prices have been falling and memory sizes have been increasing (as things tend to do in the computer world). Today you can order as few of 25 printed or engraved USB wedding favours for only a couple of pounds each. The range of styles and designs available is huge and you can choose from some really good looking wood, metal, leather or plastic styles some of which can be supplied (personalised) in only 24hrs – handy if it’s a “shotgun wedding”!!

The really nice things about these using USB sticks as wedding favours (aside from the fact that you can easily load them with lots of personal data) is that they come in a wide range of great looking gift boxes that can also be individually personalised – these can then be used as name “cards” on the tables to add that extra special flourish!

Whether it’s a case of overexposure, boredom or companies just wanting something that stands out from the crowd all of a sudden we are seeing a surge of interest in custom USB sticks. Falling prices for custom USB moulds, reduced leads times and falling minimum order quantities have all given bespoke option a real shot in the arm.

The current lead time for a custom model is around 4 weeks (it can be shortened a little if physical samples aren’t needed before the final production goes ahead – in this case photos from the factory will need to be signed off), the minimum order quantity is now 250 pcs rather than 500 and prices are often only marginally higher than comparable “standard” drives that use “factory USB shells”, e.g. the Twister, Chic or Trident.

Any 3-D shape can be created.  Don’t worry if you don’t have the design team or skills in house to come up with the concepts because a reputable local supplier should be able to do this for you as part of the “value” they add to handling your order. You will not be expected to develop CAD drawings or detailed specs – your USB supplier will (or should) do this!

Custom USB Memory Stcks

Typically the drives will be manufactured from a slight soft and pliable PVC material rather than a hard plastic – this is just easier to work with and allows lots of detail to be produced on the finished product without fear of it snapping off. Other options such as metal or wood are an option but the lead times tend to be longer and they cost more so there is less demand for them.

The finished products always looks fantastic, without fail they generate rave reviews and they always seems to get people taking to sites like Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest to post pictures of the USB sticks they’ve been given – all of this is a marketing managers dream and is rarely a reaction that is achieved today with “standard” USB drives.

So, next time you’re in the market for some promotional USB’s then you should explore the options to get your own custom versions designed and manufactured – they’ll be unique to you and they’ll give your brand building strategy a real shot in the arm!