Sigma Promotions

Promotional products are useful and/or symbolic products which are used in advertising and communication as communication vehicles, goodwill reminders, signs, gifts and incentives.

Advertising Specialties
Ad specialties have these key elements:
1) an advertising or promotional message,
2) placed on (or with) a useful item, and
3) given with no strings attached.

Premiums
Give a useful item with some strings attached, example, buy a book, get a free bookmark.

Incentives
A promotional product is offered as an incentive to produce a specific action. Example - reach a sales target and get a free vacation (incentive travel programs, sales incentives).

Rewards
Plaques, service pins, trophies, award jewellery and other gifts that signify performance or honours can be categorized as recognition awards.

Business Gifts
Typically given by businesses to customers and employees, and occasionally, suppliers. In the context used here, business gifts are not extravagant gifts and trips. Gift-giving reasons cited by companies are: to thank customers, to develop business, to recognize employee performance and longevity, because customers expect them, and others.

Top Eight Uses of Promotional Products
1.     Promote goodwill/image
2.     Reinforce marketing of existing products, services, facilities
3.     Recognize employee performance
4.     Generate sales leads
5.     Promote trade show traffic
6.     Introduce new products, services, facilities
7.     Stimulate employee sales performance
8.     Stimulate employee productivity

Promotional products are being positioned more and more, not as a pure product, but as part of the promotion buyer's promotional and communications mix.

High speed information gives audiences a choice about whether they wish to be exposed to mass advertising. Promotional Products advertising has proven to be much more effective in its unobtrusive, targeted, personalized approach.

Due to its useful nature, promotional products tend to be kept and used, leading to voluntary repeated exposure, recognition and retention of the advertiser's name and/or message.

The use of promotional products is most effective when the target audience is specifically identified. Items can then be selected to appeal to that audience, creating a positive response and eliminating waste distribution.

Which products to choose when there are tens of thousands of products to choose from? This task is most easily accomplished with the help of a professional promotional product distributor.

Try discussing these options with your Sigma rep:
1. Biodegradable corn plastic is used for everything from pens to mugs.
2. Solar-powered technology "fuels" earth-friendly flashlights, calculators and more.
3. Organic cotton, bamboo or hemp makes apparel "green."
4. Recycled PET transforms traditional polyester and plastics into environmentally correct choices.
5. Naturally appealing products like plant seedlings, seed packets and even imprinted walnuts provide a clever alternative to man-made promotional items.

Our factories produce the highest level of artwork replication possible. In order to properly maintain the integrity of your logo as well as produce a crisp screen to set up artwork, our factories require "vector" artwork.

Vector artwork is a high resolution artwork file that can be stretched to billboard size before it starts looking fuzzy. Providing original artwork in programs like Aodbe Illustrator or Corel Draw will ensure that your logo is reproduced at the highest level.

Let us know! We're here to help and if we can't recreate the file for you, we have graphic artists on hand that can do so at a reasonable rate.

DPI (dots per inch) is the unit of measurement for resolution, communicating the density of dots in a print image or on a computer screen. It is helpful to remember that as the dpi doubles, the number of dots within a square inch quadruples. Therefore an image that's 300 dpi will have 90,000 dots per square inch. Remember, the higher the dpi, the better the resolution of your image.

CMYK color: This is the color method based upon pigments. "CMYK" stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Using these four colors, most other colors can be achieved.

PMS (Pantone Matching System): This is a printing color method based on a list of specially mixed colors by Pantone Corp. These colors are considered to be "pure" and "true" based on their exacting specifications.

BMP (bitmap) is a map of dots or pixels, which typically comes in file formats such as .gif, .tif, .jpg or .bmp. Each dot can specify a color. The larger the resolution the better, but these files generally aren't the best choice for imprint artwork.

GIF (graphics interchange format) is often the format used for the photos you see on the Internet, because the files are small and download quickly.

JPG or JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a standard compression format for high-resolution color images. They too are created by pixels. The higher the dpi, the better the image of the jpeg.

TIFF (tagged image file format) is a file format for exchanging bitmapped images.

EPS (encapsulated postscript) is a type of graphics file written in postscript language.

PDF (Adobe portable document format) offers an easy way to share files and to illustrate what you want your artwork to look like. However, these files aren't always the best from which to have your garment imprinted.

The direct screen printing process involves placing the material under a mesh screen. By applying even pressure with a squeegee on the screen, your logo is imprinted onto the material surface. The screen printing process ensures your imprint looks its best on a wide variety of fabrics. This is the most common method of decoration.

A transfer is created in a very similar method to screen printing, however, the ink is applied to a sheet of transfer paper instead of directly onto the material. The transfer is then pressed onto the product using a combination of heat and pressure. This method allows for unlimited colour separations that always require an underlay. Many products utilize this process as it assists in decorating products with foam insulation or hard to screen print locations.

Pad Printing is extremely effective on rounded, uneven, or slanted product shapes. It is also perfect for small and intricate logos. A silicone pad is used to transfer the ink onto the product. The pad can hit various levels on a product at one time. Ink colour availability is restricted due to the limited ability to mix inks utilized in this process. Pad printing is utilized on products such as: plastics, pens, aluminum, tins, rubber, cardboard gift boxes, metal, vinyl, leather and paper pad banners.

The process of debossing is offered on most of our leather, koskin, textura, EVA, and simulated leather lines only. A die is created of your logo and then pressed into the material creating an "impression" of the logo. Debossing provides a subtle, yet higher perceived value on many products.

Perfect Print allows a full colour computer generated logo to be printed onto heat transfer material and pressed onto a variety of fabrics. This process is produced at a lower cost than multi colour screen prints and is perfect for halftones and gradients. A full white underlay must always be present. Maximum size of 40 square inches, optional die cut available.

Your logo attains a refined and elegant look with engraving. The logo is carved directly into the surface using a laser. The even and clean lines create a novel and detailed logo. Laser Engraving is most common on wood products and metal products, such as carabiners.

Remnants of non woven material in various colours are run through a machine where they are melted down into a liquid form. Plastic (Polypropylene) pellets are then mixed with the liquid. All colour is extracted and dye in a coloured pellet form is then added to the mixture.

The liquid is then poured onto a flat surface where it is heated to a very high temperature and becomes a large sheet of plastic or flexible resin polymer (not a "woven" fabric). The flexible resin polymer is actually debossed to give the appearance of woven cloth. Lastly, the ready-to-use non woven material is compressed with large rollers and cooled.

The end result is non woven material made of reclaimed production waste with 25% recycled content. Our non woven polypropylene comes in various gram weights including 75, 90, 100, 110 and 120 gsm (grams per square metre). Generally speaking, the higher the gsm, the more durable the fabric. We have full control of the manufacturing and recycling processes as we produce, sew and recycle our non woven material in our manufacturing plant in China. Material scraps are never wasted or discarded. Instead, they are used over and over again. Closing the loop on what we use and dispose reduces the carbon footprint by easing the strain on landfills.

To find out more about QR barcodes view this article.