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Posts Tagged ‘promotional usb flash drives’

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USB Flash Drive Prices Rise by around 15%

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Sterling has been on the slide for the last couple of weeks and reached a 31-month low against the dollar on Friday. This was before the announcement by Moody’s of it downgrade of the UK from the much coveted AAA rating. Today sterling has continued its slide and it’s a brave man that would predict where things are likely to end up by the end this week.

Whilst a weakened sterling is good news for exports its really bad news for imports. Given all USB flash drives are manufactured in China and traded (paid for) in US dollars it’s particularly bad news for any business or educational body looking to buy printed or engraved USB memory sticks right now.

What makes things worse is that the factories in China that manufacture USB flash drives are just returning from a 2 week Chinese New Year Holiday. This long break creates a build-up in demand which in turn drives up prices. This annual “spike” in demand always drives up prices until things settle down again but this year there is the spectre of a “double whammy” of rising prices and falling currency values – combined the net effect is broadly a 15% increase in USB flash drive prices.

The Chinese New Year effect usually lasts around 4 -6 weeks before prices begin to come down again but an 8% fall in the value of the £ against the $ is unlikely to mean prices will return to where they were just a couple of weeks ago.

If you need to buy your promotional USB flash drives now or in at any time during the next few weeks then brace yourself for higher prices. If you can delay your purchase for even a couple of weeks it’s probably worth doing so.

USB Flash Drive Prices Rise on Back of AAA Rating Downgrade

USB Flash Drive Prices Rise on Back of AAA Rating Downgrade

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USB Flash Drive Prices Rise by around 15%

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Recent Trends In the Use Of Promotional USB Flash Drives

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

Everyone’s favourite little storage solution, the USB flash drive, has been with us for over 10 years and its popularity doesn’t look like faltering. Part of the reason for its continued popularity is because manufacturers continue to innovate and introduce new shapes, styles and designs and people continue to find new ways to use them.

Originally USB flash drives were primarily used as personal storage devices; replacements for floppy diskettes, CD’s and more recently DVD’s. The emphasis was on personal storage with most purchases being made by the individual for their own use. The drives were used to store and carry personal files (school and work files) and would typically be nothing more exotic that standard Microsoft office files.

Over the past few years dramatic price falls combined with significant increases in the amount of storage on a “typical” USB flash drive has seen a marked shift in the purchase and usage patterns of the USB drives. Some of the more interesting recent trends include:

Professional Photographers use USB flash drives to distribute client portfolios – the move away from 35mm film to digital image capture has given photographers the opportunity to give their clients not just printed photos but digital copies (files) of the photographs on some form of storage medium. Many photographers that originally used CD’s and DVD’s have now switched to USB flash drives. The move has been driven by a realisation that the drives look more professional, they can be sold in printed gift boxes and engraved or printed with the photographers’ logo and contact details.

Births, Marriages and Deaths celebrated on a USB flash drive – today people’s lives are charted and recorded digitally. Digital 3-D and 4-D images captured during pregnancy scans are now sold on USB sticks, births and marriages are photographed and the resulting images stored of USB flash drives and then distributed amongst family and friends. USB sticks are increasingly being used by the bride and groom as wedding favours (pre-loaded with the story of their relationship) and we’ve even seen USB sticks distributed a funerals (pre-loaded with photographs, scrapbooks, music and video clips) to help the mourners celebrate the life of the deceased.

USB Business Cards

USB Business Cards

Traditional paper business cards replaced by USB Business cards – rather than continue to hand out paper business cards some companies are now opting to hand out USB business cards. These are the same shape and size as traditional paper cards albeit they’re a little fatter at 2mm thick, but the real benefit of these cards is that they can be pre-loaded with the company’s brochures, presentations, audio files, media files, press releases etc. Not only are they a great innovation but they are a real talking point and by pre-loading them with relevant media they are really cost effective.

Printed Brochures and Catalogues distributed on a USB flash drive – Companies that have historically printed glossy brochures and then distributed them in the post are now increasingly using USB flash drives pre-loaded with electronic copies of the brochure. Not only are the drives more popular with the recipients but they are much cheaper to post.

Flash Drives take the Promotional Gift market by storm – millions of USB flash drives are given away by schools, universities and businesses every year. They are typically pre-printed with a logo, loaded up with data and then given away. The intent is to deliver information on the company, its products and service, to build brand awareness and loyalty and to give the recipient something that has a high perceived value – a printed USB flash drive ticks all of these boxes.

With printed USB flash drives now available from under £2 per unit and with speeds and memory sizes improving all the time it looks as though the future of the humble USB memory sticks is assured for a few more years yet. When the adoption of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (which delivers a X 10 increase in data transfer speeds) starts to gather pace expect further innovation to underpin continued sales and new directions of use.

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Recent Trends In the Use Of Promotional USB Flash Drives

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Does Google Drive Sound the Death Knell for USB Flash Drives

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

Whilst some critics are saying they are late to the market the announcement yesterday by Google of their new “Google Drive” service will have competitors like Dropbox and Microsoft (SkyDrive) quaking in their boots.  Hanns Kohler-Kruner from tech research firm Gartner has said “Google Drive will hit some competitors very hard and shake up the market,”

The free entry level option gives users 5GB (gigabytes) of storage. Options to increase the amount of storage (up to a maximum of 16TB) have also been launched but at the top end it’ll cost you $799.99. A more realistic 100GB of storage is available at $4.99 per month which compares favourably to Dropbox who currently charge $25 per month for a similar amount of storage.

Essentially Google Drive is a “Cloud based” storage solution that will allow users to upload and download data (files, pictures, videos, etc.) from their PC or Mac, their mobile phone or tablet. Android phones are supported from the get go and an update is expected within weeks to support iPhones.

With Google now entering the market will people still use or want portable storage options like USB Flash Drives? After all, why pay for a small USB stick that you might lose or break when you can simply upload your data safely and securely to a cloud based storage option like Google Drive. Not only that but whether you use Google, Dropbox or Microsoft you’ll expect your data to be accessible wherever you are and without any worries of it ever being lost or corrupted. With such compelling arguments why would you buy/use a USB flash drive?

Well for some people handing over their precious/sensitive data to Google and entrusting them to keep it secure is a “non-starter”. Worries of who will have access to the data, vulnerability to hacking and just general paranoia about not being able to “physically hold it” mean the solution is not going to be for everyone. But, for your average home user/student, particularly those with the latest smartphones and a Gmail accounts, an integrated Google solution is going to be a formidable option and services like these will gradually erode the use of USB flash drives in the consumer market.

Promotional USB Flash Drives

Promotional USB Flash Drives

Interestingly though, sales of promotional USB flash drives have never been stronger. Companies wishing to distribute data or provide a relatively inexpensive “branded giveaway” are now using USB flash drives in preference to CD’s and DVD’s and it’s a trend that looks set to continue. Underpinning the growth is a realisation that USB sticks have a high perceived value, they’re small and portable and they look great printed. It’s also cheaper to supply electronic brochures, price lists, catalogues etc. on a branded USB flash drive than it is to get them printed and distributed.

In response manufacturers and suppliers of promotional USB flash drives are continually bringing out new products to drive the market. Recent innovations include wafer thin credit card style USB flash drives that are only 2mm thick and bamboo USB flash drives that play well in the re-cycled/environmentally conscious market.

So, whilst consumers might start to reduce their spend on portable USB flash drives (in favour of cloud based solutions) they are increasingly likely to be given USB flash drives by companies looking for a way to communicate with them in a more innovative and cost effective manner.

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Does Google Drive Sound the Death Knell for USB Flash Drives

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Promotional USB Flash Drives –Delivered in 24Hrs

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

We all know the feeling. You’ve been planning your company’s participation at a major trade show for months and you’re pretty confident that you’ve got everything on track and you’re safe from any last minute “dropped catches”. That is until your boss decides that it might be a good idea to give away promotional USB flash drives from the show stand!

No doubt your boss will have recently been given one of these himself at a similar show (probably from a competitor) and had been meaning to tell you for a while that he wanted them for your show – it just “slipped his mind!”

Oblivious to the trauma you’ve experienced over the last few months in the run up to the show as you try and juggle organising the stand (design, floor plans, equipment, electricians, staff to man it, invites to key customers, promotion and advertising, tweets, website promotion, printed brochures, name badges and beverages for the staff on the stand) he now wants you to pull a “rabbit out of the hat” and deliver promotional USB flash drives with your logo printed on them in less than 2 days! Easy (not)!

Whilst you might think promotional USB flash drives are a good idea (you’ve probably mentioned them to him in the past but interestingly they are now his idea!) getting them organised in such a short amount of time is not going to be easy. The only saving grace is that you do have the artwork you want printed ready to go because you’ve had it created in high resolution format for the stand and other giveaways.

If you hit the internet and punch in your requirements to a popular search engine you’ll soon find a plethora of USB suppliers that purport to offer a fast turnaround but your relief is likely to quickly turn to anxiety when you realise that their interpretation of “fast” is 3-5 days!

The problem is that very few suppliers are willing to carry local stock of USB flash drives because they know if they don’t sell them that they’ll be stuck with an asset that rapidly depreciates in value (the price is USB flash drives halves every 12 months).  If you do find a supplier with stock they also need to have the capability of printing them on the day you place your order – a big ask!

Only a very small number of USB suppliers are big enough to hold stock and have in-house design and print capabilities and one of these is USB2U – now in their 10th year they able to supply a range of different types and memory sizes of USB sticks printed with your logo in as little as 24hrs (assuming you get your order and artwork to them in the morning that is).

So, if you do get given the “monkey” of getting promotional USB flash drives at very short notice don’t mess around going to lots of different companies just pick up the phone and speak to the team at USB2U.

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Promotional USB Flash Drives –Delivered in 24Hrs

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Taking Branded Memory A Step Further

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Using branded USB flash drives as a promotional giveaway has many benefits but one big advantage over other promotional merchandise is the usefulness and valuable appeal. Since a USB flash drive is a piece of electrical technology it has a much larger appeal to customers and potential clients than a pen, key ring or post-it notes. The appeal to customers is evidently the usability of the USB device for personal use so the larger the amount of memory the better.  If you are anything like us you probably have a few different branded USB flash drives that you have collected over the past few years floating around your desk and in your drawers, but you only seem to use the 8GB or 16GB memory stick because you know that you will rarely be stuck for space.

It is obvious that the more memory that you have in your custom USB flash drives the more useful they will be to customers, the more they will use them and the more brand exposure that you will get from each memory stick.  The down side is that the memory stick is the most expensive component of the flash drive and more memory means slightly more money per drive.  We understand that the size of memory in your promotional USB flash drives will depend on the company, project budget and use of the flash drives, however the benefits to be considered are the customers re-use of the flash drive, the perception of the company from the memory size and the data size that can be pre-loaded onto the drive.  One company that we did a job for was well aware of these benefits and didn’t want to risk anything.

We have just branded a large batch of 500GB 2.5” hard drives pre-loaded with only just over 7GB of pre-loaded data.  ‘Why 500GB hard drives for only 7GB of data?’ you might ask.  It’s clear that this company understands the benefits of giving potential customers or existing clients a sleek, useful and compact device as a promotional give-away.  The company is giving the hard drives away at a conference to all who attend.

Although many companies maybe couldn’t afford, need to or want to give away a similar promotional gift the benefits for any company who does should be quite substantial.  Imagine getting a branded 500GB hard drive as a gift, any time that you use it you are bound to think of the company and how they gave it to you for free.

A large memory hard drive might be a little outside of many people’s budgets however, some of our custom USB memory sticks go up to a large 32GB memory size and will make a similar impact on clients.

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Taking Branded Memory A Step Further

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Branded USB Flashdrives Solve Marketing and Promotional Challenges

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Communicating with consumers today is much harder than it used to be, however branded USBs can hold the attention of your target audience for those valuable few minutes.

In the early days of business and trading, marketing was performed in the market place where the businesses and customers were gathered.  Marketing was much less varied than today but it was simpler as businesses knew where their customers were and how to get their attention.

With the introduction of newspapers and the wireless more marketing options were available for companies to reach their target market, but it also started to separate customers.  Businesses would have to decide which newspaper best reached their target market, advertise with them and hope that they reached the right readers.

Today however, this problem is much more problematic.  The invention of the television, computer games, Internet and multiple other entertainment mediums have led to a wide range of marketing streams and in turn have further separated customers into segments of one.  Not only are customers becoming harder to reach but they are interrupted from the media and entertainment they want with TV and radio adverts etc.

The challenge therefore is to become creative and clever in the marketing that is used to gain the attention of the right people.  Some companies spend millions on market research to discover which mediums they should use, but really what they should be doing is going back to basics.

When you give a brand new, shiny USB stick to your potential customers branded with your logo, you instantly catch their attention with something that is both visually appealing and useful to them.  We find that there is something a little more interesting and valuable to a USB flash drive than an old fashioned business card, leaflet or even a CD.  A large majority of times your customer is going to plug the memory stick into a computer to use it for file transfers to find out what has been pre loaded onto the USB stick they have been handed.

In that moment you have the complete and undivided attention of a perfectly targeted customer.  For the price of a USB flash drive, a fraction of the cost of any large marketing campaign, you have a few minutes of valuable engaged advertising.

Another advantage of this type of engaging marketing is that files, documents and information that would not be possible to communicate via other forms of marketing can be placed in front of the people you want to read it.

Our USBs can be preloaded with any type of marketing material that deserves the engaging attention of your potential customers.  The files can be set to auto-run when the USB drive is plugged into a computer so that the information isn’t missed and the drives can even be partitioned so that the information is protected whilst the rest of the drive can be used for data storage.  What’s more, the data loading is free (up to 100MB)!!!

To find out more about our data loading services click here.

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Branded USB Flashdrives Solve Marketing and Promotional Challenges

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Promotional USB Flash Drives – Normal Service Resumes

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Phew! We all know it’s coming but irrespective of how much forward planning goes into managing the extended closure of the flash drive factories in China every year the Chinese New Year holiday throws up its own challenges and leaves many customers frustrated and disappointed.

Chinese New Year is a national holiday and technically whilst it only lasts around 10 days lots of people take an extended break to give them time to travel home to see their families – bearing in mind “home” can be several thousands of miles away the extended break is perhaps no surprise.

During the Chinese New Year holiday pretty much everything comes to a standstill; the factories that produce flash memory modules, the factories that produce the flash controller chips, the factories that assemble the finished flash drives and lots of the freight haulage companies close. It’s a bit like letting a steam train that’s been clattering along at 80mph come to a stop and then extinguishing the boiler fires.

Restarting the train takes time, you need to re-light the fires, build up the steam pressure again and then gradually start to gain momentum.

USB Steam TrainA week after the return from the Chinese New Year holidays we’re now full steam ahead again and we’re turning around customer orders for promotional USB flash drives within 10-days of order – sometimes quicker!

We always carry lots of stock in the UK that we can print and deliver within 48hrs if you’re in a hurry but you will inevitably be limited in terms of design, colour and memory size and you’ll also pay a premium for the UK print charges. If you have the time you’re always better off letting us manufacture and print your USB flash drives at one of our factories in China, this way you get exactly what you want and it’ll be cheaper!

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Promotional USB Flash Drives – Best Sellers in 2010

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

With the end of 2010 fast approaching its time for our annual roundup of the best selling promotional USB flash drives in 2010 and a quick look at the trends we expect to see emerging in 2011.

Overall promotional USB flash drives continue to grow in popularity with more companies realising that by pre-loading them with sales material, press releases and media files that they can more than offset the cost of the purchase of the flash drive from the savings they make by not printing this collateral. Falling costs, faster lead times, a wider range of models and continued innovation by the manufacturers have also driven their popularity.

Custom flash drives (fully bespoke models) rather than standard factory designs have also seen a big leap in popularity in 2010, again, partly driven by falling costs, reduced set-up and tooling costs and improved lead times. The incredibly popularity of flash drives means it can be increasingly difficult to generate a “wow” factor with standard drives and this has also led to the move towards custom USB memory sticks.

From the standard range of USB drives the best sellers in 2010 were:

Twister USB Memory Sticks – The simple “Twister” flash drive regularly tops the list of best sellers and 2010 is no

Twister USB

Twister USB

exception. Its popularity derives from its simplicity, the fact there is no cap to lose and because it comes in a wide range of colours. New mono versions (where the rotating clip matches the body colour) have proven to be an instant hit further fuelling demand for the Twister.

USB Credit Cards – the new 2mm thick versions of the USB credit card have become an instant hit. A little more expensive than standard shaped USB flash drives but with significantly more print area to work with they are ideal for more complex images. The fact that they are the same size as a standard bankcard means they are ideal to pop into a wallet or purse.

Credit Card USB

Credit Card USB

Chic USB Flash Drive – clean, simple lines coupled with a wide range of colours and a good print area make this a popular USB stick. Certainly not one of the newer styles but an endearing favourite all the same.

Looking forward to 2011 we expect to see further growth in the demand for customised USB flash drives and the first generation of USB 3.0 promotional flash drives. At the moment USB 3.0 products are too expensive to be considered by the promotional market but in 2011 we’re likely to see the first promotional versions issued albeit it’s likely these will be tightly targeted because they are going to be expensive.

With falling prices the typical memory size used for promotional usb flash drives is likely to increase from 1GB to 2GB or 4GB and with this extra space is likely to come a growth in the demand for pre-loading the drives with data before they are distributed.

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Promotional USB Flash Drives – Best Sellers in 2010

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Beware of Fake Flash in Promotional USB Memory Flash Drives

Friday, December 11th, 2009

The continued popularity of USB memory sticks and flash drives for promotional and marketing activities has spawned a parallel market in the supply of cheap and often fake products.

Understandably procurement managers and buyers are constantly looking at ways to drive down their costs and it’s tempting when you’re offered memory sticks at a significant discount to order them. After all the pictures of the memory sticks you’ll be shown to support the order will look pretty much the same as other quotes you’ll no doubt have obtained from other suppliers so how do you know if what you’re being offered is genuine?

USB Memory Sticks

Firstly, lets be clear on what some of the typical scams are:

Quality memory sticks

  • Use of “re-cycled” and Grade B flash memory chips. These are flash memory chips that have been salvaged from other products or perhaps failed a full QA process. They are likely to be to correct memory size but they will have a much higher failure rate and will typically perform poorly, e.g. the read/write speeds will be slow.
  • “Masking” smaller capacity flash chips to make them look bigger. This is where the external flash disk and packaging is marked up to look like it’s a 1GB stick, the memory stick when connected to a PC will also suggest it has 1GB of storage but the actual capacity is say 256MB or 512MB. Extremely difficult to spot.
  • Using cheaper memory components rather than the specified brands. If you want a memory stick with a specified high-grade chip such as Intel or Samsung then you’ll pay a premium for these but you’ll also trust your supplier that these used. Once your memory sticks are delivered you don’t want to have to go through the hassle of breaking open a sample just to check that the internal memory is as specified.
  • Simple repackaging and re-labelling the memory sticks to make them look like they have more memory than they actually do.

The best way to avoid becoming a victim of these scams is to buy from a trusted and reputable supplier and ideally a local supplier that will take ownership of any post delivery problems or issues you might have.

Whilst it’s incredibly tempting to buy direct from some of the “factories” advertising themselves on the Internet think long and hard about it before you commit to an order. How for example will you deal with any problems once you have taken delivery of them? Typically once a “factory” has shipped they will not take the product back and your chances of recovering your money and taking action against them are slim to non-existent!

Also many of the supposed “factories” offering discounted prices are not really factories or manufacturers at all. Whilst they may have fancy web sites with lots of images of production staff diligently sitting at desks manufacturing and assembling memory sticks these are typically just “stock photos” and the factories will either be agents, middlemen or fraudsters.

The only way to be truly sure is to visit your supplier on site, check their factories and working conditions, check that they are complying with the current RoHS regulations and that they meet all the latest WEEE and REACH Compliance Regulations. Failing this just go with a local supplier that has already undertaken all of this due diligence.

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Beware of Fake Flash in Promotional USB Memory Flash Drives

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Promotional USB Flash Products Can Place You In Front

Friday, August 21st, 2009

If you want to have an impact with your promotional goods, you need to be able to offer a good or product that will be used regularly enough. This is because a greater degree of benefit will arise when your logo or name is continually seen by the company or employee that you gave the promotional gift to. With so many rival firms competing for attention, having the gift or promotional tool that makes you stand out from everyone else is priceless and would pay for itself in no time at all. This is why a promotional usb flash product could be the difference between you and your rivals.

No matter what colour is associated with your firm, it will be possible to find a promotional usb flash to match your corporate branding. The importance of having a cohesive image is one that is extremely important to a firm as this will make it much easier for a firm or potential customer to remember you. Using the right sort of usb flash or promotional item will reinforce your image in the mind of a customer and could place your company at the forefront of any decision they will make in the future. Given the current economic crisis that is affecting so many people around the world, it has never been more important to do everything that you can to improve your companies fortunes. Again, it is important to remember that if you don’t do it, your rivals may well do this and they will get the opportunity to make the sales that you are missing out on.

One of the other benefits that comes with using promotional usb flash technology as a gift to other firms is that it is possible to preload the flash drive. This means that you can include details about your firm and your products or services for the recipient to view at their own leisure. This will give you a greater chance of making an impact upon them and it should ensure they will always be able to examine your product details and will have your contact details at close hand. This form of promotional activity is extremely clever and goes a long way towards creating a relationship between the two firms. Given the current economic climate, anything which can be done to make the bonds between a supplier and buyer stronger should be encouraged.

Anything that you can do to sell yourself and make your firm more attractive to potential customers is well worth considering and promotional usb flash products are a little bit different. The fact that they offer fashion and functionality should make them the ideal product to use these days and by offering them to other people and firms, you will be doing everything you can to promote your firm. Every time your potential customer goes to use their promotional usb flash drive, they will remember where they received it from and you may be rewarded with future sales and business in the months and years ahead.

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Promotional USB Flash Products Can Place You In Front

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