Ironically the downside of using standard designed USB sticks is their popularity. So many USB sticks are now being given away that if you really want something that is truly memorable and something that stands out from the crowd then its worth considering a custom USB memory stick. Custom USB memory sticks (also known as bespoke flash drives) are commissioned pieces that are designed and built specifically for you. As such they are unique and exclusive to you and whomever you give them to. You own the design of any custom USB flash drive and they will not be made available to any other customer.

Custom USB Letters

Custom USB memory sticks can be produced in a wide variety of materials and in any 2-D or 3-D shape you want. Recent examples of custom USB sticks include Forklift trucks, Guitars. Eggs, Erasers and Signs but anything is possible.

Using your company’s name as the basis for a custom USB stick also works incredibly well as these examples illustrate. These simple but very effective ideas just work and arguably they work better than a shape or product that could have been designed to represent the brand or company name.

Custom USB Word

The lead times for custom USB flash drives are a little longer at around 4 weeks (this is to allow for the fabrication of the tooling and the custom production) but if you have the time in your project or event schedule then they are worth the wait. The cost of Custom USB flash drives used to be significantly higher than standard models and the minimum order quantities were high at around 1,000+ pieces. Today with increased competition in the market and improvements in mould set-up and production the costs are now only marginally more and the minimum order threshold has dropped to around 200 pieces.

If you are looking for a promotional product that really stands out from the crowd, something that will generate “chatter” and interest in your, your company, your products and/or your news then its definitely worth considering a fully customised USB flash drive.

Don’t worry about having the design skills to develop an idea or concept because good, professional suppliers of USB sticks will have their own experienced in-house design teams who can work on the most basic of ideas and develop a series of mock-ups for you to consider.

At USB2U we provide branded and custom flash drives to a number of reseller partners who in turn on-sell them to their clients and partners. In choosing our reseller partners we undertake as much due diligence as we can to ensure that they will not let their customers down and that their actions don’t reflect badly on us at USB2U.

Exemplar UK LLP

Unfortunately www.exemplar-UK.com has, in our opinion, let the industry in which we operate down and we now regret having supplied them with branded memory sticks for their clients. Our disappointment with Exemplar UK LLP stems from the fact that they were placing orders and taking receipt of printed products from us within a matter of days of claiming their company was insolvent and stating that they would not be paying for the goods supplied by us and we now sit on a very sizeable loss of thousands of pounds.

Clearly the economic conditions in which all businesses in the UK operate in at the moment are tough and there will be casualties. In our opinion the acid test of whether you want to deal with the Directors involved in these company failures moving forward is how they deal with these difficulties when they are happening and how upfront they are with their suppliers and customers during the problem times.

Ordering branded and customised stock and chasing for its delivery within hours of voluntarily taking your company under is legal but whether its morally right is open to question and of course it breaches the key ingredient of any customer supplier relationship and that is trust.

The www.exemplar-uk.com domain name is site is still live but it points to re-branded version of the old Exemplar website and contains the following statement: “Exemplar are now proud to be part of the Media Plant Group”

Trust is hard won and easily lost. Choose your suppliers and partners with care.

Some of the most recognised brands include: Dunlop, TaylorMade, Adidas, Ping, Titliest, Callaway, Wilson, Nike and Mizuno. Every player will have their favourite clubs manufacturer, favourite golf ball manufacturer and so on and these global brands commit millions of pounds each year on R&D, design and sponsorship to make for example their particular golf clubs or golf balls the preferred choice of the golf community.

USB Golf Bag

With every manufacturer scrambling for consumer spend in the midst of tough economic times its interesting to see the innovation now creeping into the advertising and marketing plans of many brands. Nowhere is this more evident than in the use of USB flash drives. Of course they are not using just any old factory designed flash drive with their logo printed on, no, they are commissioning fully bespoke flash drives in the shape of their equipment.

So, next time you’re at the London Golf Show or the Scottish Golf Show or any Golf Show for that matter don’t be surprised to coaxed onto a trade stand with the lure of a Custom USB Golf Ball or a Custom USB Golf bag. These super little promotional products are facsimiles of the real thing just a little smaller and of course they’re fully functional USB flash drives.

The beauty of these products is that the manufacturer can pre-load onto the flash drive all of their product range, technical data sheets, video’s of the product in use, testimonials from professional players, details of local stockists, links to their web site and so on. Rather than hand out lots of glossy but heavy and expensive marketing information

USB Golf Ball

its far easier for all concerned to have this information on a small, handy and imaginatively produced flash memory stick. Easier for the recipient as they won’t be burdened with lots of brochures to lug around the show and easier for the giver as their print costs, storage costs, transport costs etc. will all be dramatically reduced.

Because USB flash drives are incredibly popular products they will be welcomed as promotional gift and unlike CD’s or DVD’s they will be used.  Done well they’ll also generate a real level of interest and “chatter” which is precisely what any good promotional product should deliver.

Custom flash drives, as these images illustrate, can be manufactured in any shape and in a range of different materials. Pricing is just a little more than a standard flash drive you just need to allow a week or so more for their manufacture.

Fulham FC Custom USB

The team at USB2U send our best wishes to Fulham FC  and will be backing them to win the match tonight. We are after all a little biased because Fulham were kind enough to place their order for some custom USB memory sticks with us and for this we thank them and we’ll offer our hearty support tonight.

Of course the Custom USB flash drives we supplied (manufactured in the shape of the Fulham FC club badge) will have had little bearing on the team’s performance but it is great to be associated with a winning team. The custom sticks that Fulham ordered clearly went down well as they have been back for more and we can’t help but hope that their continued success on the field will see them come back time and time again.

Of course you don’t have to be a hugely succesful football team to order custom or branded USB memory sticks. Today lots of companies, schools, universities and clubs buy branded memory sticks to help with their brand development, to generate interest in what they do and their products and services and to say “thank you” to customers and staff. Prices for custom sticks in particular have fallen over the past few years and minimum order quantities are now set at at accessible level of 50 pieces so (for printed not custom versions) everyone can afford to order them.

For many the cost of buying branded flash drives is off-set by the savings made in pre-loading  marketing, sales and product material onto the memory stick rather then printing and transporting them to an event or show.

Come on Fulham!

Custom USB flash drives are made to order, bespoke, flash drives that are manufactured in a shape, style and material of your choosing. Typically a custom flash drive is produced in a 2-D or 3-D shape that represents something about your company or your company’s products. So, if your company manufactures forklift trucks you could get a bespoke flash drive produced in the shape of a forklift. Similarly if your company imports fruit you could get a custom USB memory stick produced in the shape of a banana or apple.

Custom USB Forklift

Alternatively if you have invested in an advertising campaign (TV, Press, Radio etc.) then you might want to come up with something that links into the campaign. Orange Mobile for example recently commissioned some brilliant custom USB cartoon characters that were designed around the characters in their TV and poster campaign. The reaction to the memory sticks from their customers and partners has been brilliant and far exceeded their expectations. The sticks themselves also show just what can be done with a little thought and imagination.

The process to order custom USB flash drives is not as difficult as you might think. It’s really just a question of coming up with the idea and then asking our design team to work up some ideas for you. Of course if you have some very fixed requirements (like Orange) then it’s even easier because the flash drives will be designed to match, exactly, the characters.

Custom USB Examples

Once a design has been agreed the factory will produce a physical sample for you to approve. This will be air freighted in from the factory because it’s important that you not only see and feel the sample but that you confirm the material that it’s proposed to manufacture the drive from.

Once the samples have been approved its full steam ahead with the production. The total lead time to consider for a custom flash drives is around 4 weeks from initial contact but this can increase if multiple samples and amends are needed so where you can factor in a little extra time.

As the examples above illustrate custom USB memory sticks can look fantastic and they really do create a level of interest, “chatter” and response that simply cannot be matched by more traditional promotional gifts and give-aways.

This exciting new development will allow Xbox gamers to save their games and other content directly to a removable USB flash drive and then take it with them to other locations. Of course this is something that users of PC’s have been used to doing for years but not on the Xbox – well until yesterday!

Microsoft are set to launch their own range of branded USB memory sticks in May 2010 but you don’t have to wait until then to take advantage of this new feature because any USB flash drive with a capacity of more than 1GB and up to a maximum of 16Gb will do.

For the promotions industry this development opens up all sorts of new and interesting opportunities. The growth in the use of branded flash drives for promotional purposes has been immense over the last few years as companies recognise consumer demand for these flash drives and tap into this by offering free promotional flash drives pre-loaded with data to encourage use of their products.

We expect to see a number of companies now come forward and develop a range of branded USB flash drives pre-loaded with “teaser” content aimed specifically at the Xbox demographic. Up until now its been much harder for marketers to target the gaming community with a branded memory stick but this move by Microsoft is bound to get the Creative Directors of many advertising and promotional agencies thinking.

Of course USB flash drives don’t need to be restricted to boring rectangular designs that we’re all used to. If you really want to capture the imagination of the Xbox community what about a custom USB flash drive in the shape of one of the weapons from Call of Duty or if that’s too politically incorrect what about a custom USB flash drive in the shape of a Forza Motorsport key fob for the Forza Xbox game.

Expect a plethora of promotional and giveaway Xbox 360 flash drives to underpin the launch of forthcoming games titles.

Standard branded memory sticks were never going to be able to do the job because whilst they are great at showing off a brand the challenge with BFGoodrich was to go the extra mile and come up with something that was not only visually excellent but was also a tactile representation of what they do and what they stand for.

Working with the BFGoodrich team we came up with the idea of a rubber USB wristband. These flash drives are a little different because they wrap around the users wrist just like a bracelet. They relatively light, easy to wear and look a lot like the charity wristbands that you see a lot of these days. But, for BFGoodrich the idea was to develop the wristband and create a unique mould so that the finished product was not only rubber but had a tyre tread on the surface.  The wristband was then produced in black and with their logo on and the end result looks stunning. In fact it looks just like a piece of tyre tread fashioned into a wristband!

Whilst not to everyone taste there is no doubting the innovation behind it and the “wow” factor these custom memory sticks create. What BGGoodrich have shown is that with a little imagination you can come up with a really interesting, imaginative and eye-catching custom USB solution.

Custom memory sticks can be fashioned in 2-D and 3-D shapes and manufactured from a range of different and flexible materials. The incremental cost of a fully bespoke drive is not much more than a standard factory model but you do need to allow a little more time for the production because the factory will want time to produce physical samples and proofs for your approval. If you can afford the time and you can build it into your project plan then custom sticks are definitely worth the wait.