The usual late May Bank holiday is being moved to Monday 4^th June and an extra “Diamond Jubilee Bank Holiday” has been announced for Tuesday 5 June. So, the extended Bank Holiday will last from 2^nd June to 5^th June.

During this extend break there will be a special pageant on the River Thames on Sunday 3 June when Queen Elizabeth II will lead a flotilla of a 1,000 boats; on the 4^th June 2,012 beacons will be lit by communities across the UK and over the Bank Holiday thousands of Diamond Jubilee Street Parties are already being planned up and down the country to celebrate the Queens 60^th reign.

But, at least one village is planning its own unique twist on the celebrations and has decided to combine a street party with a the publication of a book crammed with photographs illustrating the changes the village and it’s residents have undergone during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. In the run up to the Holiday Week the residents (under the leadership of a well organized committee) have commissioned professional photographers to take photos of the current residents, their families, their houses and local church, school and lots of everyday activities that take place in the village. These contemporary photographs will be catalogued with historic photographs to show how things have changed in the village of the last 60 years.

The finished book will be revealed during the Jubilee Bank Holiday and copies sold to raise funds for the village and the restoration of the local church.

Diamond Jubilee Design

Illustrative of how things have changed during Elizabeth’s reign extracts from the book will be made available on the Village Web Site (every village seems to have one these days) and electronic copies of the book will be sold pre-loaded onto USB memory sticks that have been printed with the details of the village and the official Diamond Jubilee Emblem (designed by 10 year old Katherine Dewar).

Printed USB memory sticks have recently been used for all manner of promotional activities and are commonly used to distribute music, book and photographs on but it’s interesting to see they have also infiltrated the psyche of the local village church and WI’s. Only a few years go USB sticks (USB Flash drives as some people prefer to call them) have, like of technologies, crossed over from being a techie product that is only used by geeks to become part of our everyday life. It’ll be interesting to see in another 60 years time if anyone remembers let alone has a USB memory stick.

If you’re fund raising as part of a group then it can be a lot easier than raising funds on your own because you’ll have the benefit of pooling your ideas together and setting up a little committee to work out how you execute your plans. Fund raising on your own is a little more challenging simply because you need to be much more focused, determined and self-sacrificing. The range of activities you can don on your own will also be more limited than those you could do as a group.

Firm favourites for fund raising include:

• Sponsored walks, runs, cycle rides, silences, bungee jumping, abseiling etc. These are all “doable” as an individual or as a group but they all demand a degree of physical fitness and nerve so they’re not for everyone.
• Car boot sales, jumble sales, table top sales and garage sales.
• Quiz nights including pop quiz nights, sports quiz nights or just a general quiz night – these can be great fun but you need to put lots of energy into the promotion of the quiz night to ensure enough people turn up, typically people will want food so this needs to be factored into the planning and budgeting and you’ll need some great questions and a willing compare for the evening.
• Car cleaning and sponsored bag packing at the local supermarket – again, great ideas but lots of people want to do this and supermarkets only allow it occasionally becuae they don’t want their customers “hassled”.

For something a little bit different you could sell (for a profit) printed USB memory sticks or printed USB wristbands. USB Memory sticks (also known as flash drives, pen drives, thumb drives and pen drives) are incredibly popular at the moment. They have become the de facto way to save and carry around data files and lots of school students use them every day to save their homework onto.

Fundraising with USB Memory Sticks

You could buy USB flash drives printed with your school, church or group logo on, or you could get them printed with details of charity. One option that would make them a little bit special is to get them personalised with peoples name on – for this you’d have to take “orders” in advance and then get your supplier to print each stick with a different name on (as well as your logo).

Don’t forget you can also pre-load onto the memory sticks documents about your charity; school etc. to give people an idea about what the money you’re raising will go towards. You could also include web links to your blog, your on-line charity donation page(s) and any Facebook or Twitter pages you’ve set up to support your fund raising.

To make it worth your while you need to order at least 25 USB sticks – this way you’ll get a decent price (including the printing) and should be able to sell them on for a reasonable profit.

There are lots of suppliers around that can offer printed USB memory sticks including USB2U who have been around since 2002 and are now one of the leading suppliers in the UK.

We say it every year and every year we end up with disappointed customers who wanted a specific USB flash drive and in a particular pantone matched colour. In 2012, the Year of the Dragon, the holiday break is going to be even longer than normal with lots of factories closing from the 6^th January to the 4^th February – during this period nothing gets produced and nothing gets shipped. Nada, zip, nothing!!

Even when the factories return to work it take a week or so before things start to get back to “normal” but there are always the inevitable backlogs to deal with so typical leads times of 7-10 days can be stretched to several weeks.

Promotional USB Flash Drives

If you know you have an event, show, seminar, press launch or any other activity for which you need printed or promotional USB flash drives during January to mid-February then you need to be placing your orders now! Don’t put it off because Christmas is looming or you think you’ll be able to “sort it out” in the New Year because you might find you can’t.

Having been through the trauma of Chinese New Year factory shut-downs for the last 9 years we now do all we can to ensure continuity of supply to our customers even it the supply is limited to a small number of flash drive models and colours. But, with a limited supply in the market and lots of customers chasing the stock the tendency is for the prices to shoot up (partly because UK print costs are higher and partly because of usual supply/demand economics) – so, whilst you may find some stock your model choices, colour choices and memory size choices are likely to be very limited and you’ll end up paying a premium for your failure to plan ahead.

Without wishing to sound like a broken record we strongly urge anyone who is likely to want printed USB sticks to plan ahead now and get any order(s) in early. You don’t have to pay for them when you order them, you’ll get exactly what you want and you’ll save yourself money – pretty compelling arguments to get any internal (early) approvals you might need.

Understandably this is not always possible but at least armed with an understanding of the issues/challenges you can hopefully find a way to work with the situation.

If you are too late then don’t forget that USB2U hold thousands of USB sticks in stock and can deliver them (printed) in as little as 24hrs – you may have to compromise a little on model and colour but at least you’ll have something!

Understandably lots of companies want to include their contact phone number or web site address on the sticks as well as their logo but this creates an even greater print challenge. One option (but it’s not appropriate for some companies) is to print the logo on one side of the stick and print the contact information on the other side of the stick.

USB Credit Cards - Complex Print

The other option is to “simplify” the logo or reduce the number of colours in the logo to allow it to be reproduced in the limited space available. Again, not ideal particularly if you have to comply with internal Corporate Brand Guidelines and have to deal with the “Brand Police”.

To be fair to the “brand police” printing and reproducing your brand or logo correctly is critical. There is absolutely no point spending a fortune designing and developing a brand only to compromise it simply because the product you want to reproduce it on can’t support it.

Unfortunately the reality is that many standard shaped USB sticks are pretty small and the print area on the sticks can be even smaller. Small, compact and portable USB memory sticks are popular with users but they’re not always ideal for complex logos.

USB Cards with Complex Logo

On some small USB sticks it is possible to print full colour but by squishing your brand and any strapline onto the print area you will, in some cases, make it impossible to clearly see/read the end result.

There are several ways to deal with this challenge including using a Credit Card style USB memory stick. These are exactly same shape and size (but are 2mm thick) as a bank or credit card but they have built in flash memory and a USB connector. One of the main benefits of this product is that it fits neatly into a wallet and provides lots of flat space (front and back) to print on. You can also use the latest full colour printing process techniques on these cards to achieve a very high-resolution reproduction of any complex design.

Alternatively you if you would prefer a more “traditional” looking USB stick then you could consider the “Slider” model. This USB stick is capless, it has an integral keying loop and it’s a little larger than other memory sticks without being excessively large. But, the real beauty of this model is the very large print area onto which you can print.

If you think the USB Credit Card or Slider flash drive might solve your memory stick dilemma then give us a call (it’s free) and we’ll provide you with a personalise quote and our in-house designer will mock-up an example for you (free of charge) so you can see just how it will look.

Young Enterprise Scheme

The scheme was set up in 1963 by Sir Walter Salomon and was based on the American Junior Achievement programme. By the mid 1970’s programmes were up and running in 20+ areas of the England and since then it has gone from strength to strength.

Today there are more than 5,500 schools, colleges and universities participating in the programme and every year 30,000 students between the ages of 15-19 take part in the Young Enterprise’s flagship Company Programme when they are challenged to set up and run their own companies. Business mentors are typically on hand to offer advice and guide them through the trials and tribulations of running a small business.

For many fledging Young Enterprise businesses the first challenge is to decide on a business idea. Ideally they’ll be looking for something that is relatively easy to establish, something where there is genuine demand, where the up-front investment is low and something that gives them the opportunity to learn many aspects of running a business.

Fundraising Using USB Flash Drives

One such solution is to set up an Enterprise Company selling USB Memory sticks. These could be personalised, they could carry the name of the school or university the students are from or they could be printed with the name of the Enterprise Company. The sticks could be pre-loaded files, music or other media that is relevant to their target customer base.

If the range of standard USB sticks on offer is not suitable then it’s possible (with sufficient time) to get fully customised USB sticks designed and produced in any shape or style.

Printed USB Memory sticks are definitely an option worth considering because:

• It’s relatively cheap these days to buy say 100 or 200 fully branded USB flash drives and there is plenty of scope to add a reasonable margin to them when sold.
• You can start with an order from the suppliers for just 25 albeit the unit costs will increase with smaller orders
• Within most schools and colleges there is a ready-made market because USB sticks are commonly used by students and teachers.
• There are lots of UK suppliers to choose from so there is no need to deal direct with the Far East where most of the Branded USB Memory sticks are manufactured.
• Students will be exposed to a wide range of business activities including negotiating with suppliers, specifying design requirements, all the financial aspects of purchasing the printed USB Memory sticks, pricing, marketing, fulfilment and finally customer services.

School USB Flash Drives

So, if you are on an Enterprise Scheme and you’re looking for a “killer idea” then you should put reselling printed USB memory sticks on your short list.

USB Credit Cards

The price of promotional USB memory sticks has fallen dramatically over the past couple of years whilst the amount of memory you can get for your money continues to increase. These factors have contributed to a greater uptake of USB sticks but it’s the convenience and ease of use of USB sticks coupled with the fact that customers love them that has really fuelled their uptake.

Despite the fall in the price of flash drives a typical order value can still run to hundreds and in some cases thousands of pounds and most suppliers will insist on payment with any order or at best payment before any order is delivered. Whilst making the payment might not be a problem (particularly if you have a company credit or debit card) sometimes internal approval and payment processes can conflict with the timeframes you need to achieve on delivery.

At USB2U we are happy to accept request for credit terms on any orders including first orders (irrespective of the

USB Memory Sticks

value) and providing the credit checks we undertake are passed (most companies do) then any order for USB memory sticks will be supplied on 30-day payments terms starting from the date we send the sticks out and not the day any order is placed with us. This approach allows our customers to focus on getting organised for their events, shows or press launches and allows them to leave their finance teams to handle the payment.

Don’t forget that in addition to Free Credit (subject to approval) on every order for USB flash drives we also offer free 4 colour printing, free data-loading (up to 100MB), free gift boxes, free lanyards and free UK delivery. We also think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by our prices which are some of the most competitive in the industry! Interested? Then give us a call on our Freephone number 0800 008 7079 or fill out a quote request on our web site.

Qu Yuan was a minister to the Zhou emperor during the Warring States Period (475 – 221 BC). He was renowned for his opposition to the corruption that was rife in the Imperial Court.

Ou Yuan’s views were popular and he became a great success but it was his success that led to his downfall. His fellow ministers became jealous and plotted against him, they convinced the emperor that Qu Yuan was a traitor and he was exiled to his hometown.

Whilst in exile Qu Yuan collected great stories, legends and folk tales, and wrote poetry. Throughout this period he remained a strong patriot and never lost his love for his emperor. On the 5th May, 278 BC he was distraught to hear that the emperor had been overthrown by Qin warriors- in a fit of despair Ou Yuan committed suicide by throwing himself into the Miluo river.

The local townspeople, hearing of Qu Yuan’s fate, rushed to their boats to try to save him. He was much loved and out of respect they tried to prevent the fish from eating his body by throwing rice dumplings into the water and beating their drums to keep evil spirits away.

To this day, eating rice dumplings and racing dragon boats celebrate the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. In 2011 The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the 6^th June with celebrations lasting around 3 days in total.

Branded USB Flash Drives

Our factory is closed on Monday 6^th June so any new orders for branded USB flash drives between now and the 7^th June may be subject to a very small delay. If you need your flash drives urgently just give us a call and we’ll talk you through the options.

USB Clip Drive

There is no cap to lose and the ability to attach this drive securely in a range of different ways should mean the flash drive itself is not lost either.

It’s available in 2 different finishes (gold/silver effect) and it can be printed or engraved – both options look fantastic.

So, if you’ve got a show, a conference or a seminar coming up then the Clip USB flash drive is certainly worth adding to your shortlist. Of course USB flash drives are incredibly popular at the moment with millions being given away every year. Most of them are purchased by companies looking to support their sales and marketing activities although a growing number are given away by schools and universities.

With large number of USB flash drives now being given away part of the challenge when sourcing them for your school

Reverse of USB Clip Drive

or company is to find something that’s a little bit different than the standard rectangular plastic model – if you’re buying them to support your brand you want them to look good and be well received. The Clip USB flash drive is certainly a little bit different and you’d be hard pressed to find someone would not be happy to be given one.

If you’re not sure what the Clip drive will look like with your logo printed or engraved onto it just give us a call or fill out our on-line enquiry form and we’ll arrange for the Clip USB flash drive to be mocked up for you. This is a free, no obligation service and we can typically turn around your mock-up request the same day.

Twister USB - White Clip with Pantone Match

The body shell and the clip of the Twister USB can be supplied in a wide range of colour options making the twister one of the most flexible USB drives on the market It’s this flexibility that is at the heart of the Twisters popularity because customers can pick and mix components to come up with a solution that works for them – this can include opting for pantone matching of the body shell, going for a mono solution where the clip and the body are all black or all white or just mixing coloured clips with standard body shell colours.

Assortment of Twister USB Flash Drives

Shown here are a range of examples to illustrate the flexibility of the twister flash drive and exactly what can be achieved with it.

If you’re in a hurry and need your USB flash drives printed and delivered within a couple of days then you’ll probably have to choose one of the standard “factory” colours that are available from stock, e.g. black, blue, red, yellow or white but these factory colours can normally be mixed with an alternative coloured “clip” – at USB2U we hold a large number of blank coloured clips in stock so its worth a call if there is a particular colour combination you need.

Mono Twister USB Flash Drives

If you’ve got a little more time to work with (10 working days) then we can offer all of the colour options shown here and we can also supply them in a printed gift box if that’s what you need.

One final thing worth mentioning about the Twister is that the clip can be removed. So, if you do order thousands of them and get them printed with details of an event or show but you don’t use all of them then you can simply remove the clips and get new clips produced for your next event! Even if you’ve loaded them with data this can be quickly and easily removed or overwritten with new data – again, at USB2U we have banks of professional data loading machines that can write new data to your USB disks in seconds.

The promotional USB flash drive industry is seeing lots of innovation at the moment and lots of new USB flash drive models are being released but for the foreseeable future it looks like the Twister USB Flash Drive is firmly established as the top-seller.

Increasingly even USB sticks used as “giveaways” are pre-loaded with data (Word documents, PDFs, presentation files or movie clips) because it seems daft not to use the available storage space of the sticks to say something about the company giving them away. After all when you’re paying for a product that is fundamentally designed to store and carry data it makes sense to use the storage space.

For any company looking to buy printed or custom USB memory sticks it’s worth understanding what to avoid when shopping around for quotes and why it’s often worth avoiding the cheapest solution you’re offered:

Cheap USB Memory sticks are to be avoided because:

• The core components might be recycled or Grade B which means they’ll have a high failure rate (if they work at all) – unfortunately the competition amongst suppliers of branded USB memory sticks and the factories that produce them is so great that some suppliers have resorted to using very poor quality and cheap components to enable them to drive the price down.
• Even when new flash chips are used be aware that there are different grades of flash available and some will only have a working life of a couple of months.

• They’ll be very slow – the cheaper versions of flash memory and flash memory controllers used in the manufacture of branded USB memory sticks often have read/write speeds of only 2-3MB per second. This is fine if they are only being used as “cheap and cheerful” promotional items but if you have any expectation of people using them on an on-going basis then just be aware that slow USB sticks are not popular.It’s even worse if you’re looking to load large data files onto the USB sticks yourself before they are given out – manually pre-loading data files is tedious enough with fast(ish) USB sticks but excruciating with very slow USB sticks.
• Cheap promotional USB sticks tend to come from suppliers that are only interested in grabbing short-term business because rather than building a long-term relationship. So the sticks might look like a bargain when you buy them but will the supplier be around to fulfil any warranty obligations should things go pear shaped.
• Promotional USB memory sticks that fail or don’t work when they are given out to your customers are worse than useless because they reflect badly on you and your brand so instead of supporting any brand building campaign they can have the opposite effect.

Whilst you don’t have to buy the most expensive USB sticks it is worth undertaking some basic due diligence on exactly what you’ll be getting and who you plan to buy them from before you sign off that Purchase Order!