Another New Guy on the block.

[Martin Boekers]

ASI isn't cheap that's for sure! You really have to sell the stuff to justify the upper packages.
I haven't joined because I don't sell enough. Some ASI suppliers will sell to you without an ASI number.
In the old days they wouldn't. There is a pretty good mark up though once you get selling

If they got it down to just a membership, no extras for $100 they would get alot of us engravers in
just for the versitility to by blanks.

There are a few similar organizations out there, Sage, Distributor Central (no cost) and a couple others.


Did they tell you what it cost for the 2nd year?

[Don Young]

Marty,
I tried the agate thing but the laser wouldn't leave a mark. Thought there was a problem. Is there a trick to it ?

[Nestor Fernandez]

Did they tell you what it cost for the 2nd year?

They now do not require a yearly subscription (not sure if they did in the past). We signed up for $29.99/month and you can cancel at any time. We received our ASI number yesterday and we are having a conference call with our rep on Friday to go over how to use all the resources available to us. Supposedly we will be receiving a large catalog with over 3000 suppliers which we can use to place our orders. The bonus, besides the fact that we can cancel at any time, which really sold me, is that they also are going to provide us with our first 50 leads.

We are hoping to get quantity orders filled by the ASI suppliers, and use our website to do the one-off custom orders, which nobody wants to seem to do, to supplement our income.

[Nestor Fernandez]

BTW, I though I'd share another picture of some more product that we are selling on our site because I was so happy with the outcome of my product photo experiment.

All I did was get a 3 foot wide roll of white paper, drape it over a box, plant a tripod in front of the product, and experiment with the aperture and ASA settings until I got some good color and limited reflection. I know it still needs some work, but for a first round I don't think it came out all that bad.

What do you guys think??


water_bottles_4.jpg

[Dan Hintz]

I think you need a better zoom lens

[Nestor Fernandez]

I think you need a better zoom lens

oops... I posted the thumbnail at first... just modified it with the larger image.

[Martin Boekers]

BTW, I though I'd share another picture of some more product that we are selling on our site because I was so happy with the outcome of my product photo experiment.

All I did was get a 3 foot wide roll of white paper, drape it over a box, plant a tripod in front of the product, and experiment with the aperture and ASA settings until I got some good color and limited reflection. I know it still needs some work, but for a first round I don't think it came out all that bad.

What do you guys think??


water_bottles_4.jpg

Not too bad, highly reflective products are always difficult.

I use an EZ Cube system not too expensive and EZ to work with.
The lights are cool (not hot) but they do take about 10min to get
up to color temp.

These light boxes are easy to make also. Lots of plans online.
One thing about lighting sometimes you want a reflective area in front
to bounce the white onto the subject. But sometimes it's better to use a dark
card to reflect a dark area on the subect. (subtractive lighting).

Check out the EZ cube sight for ideas.

Even cheap light from Harbor Freight will work, just remember to give them time to reach
a consistant color temp. It's best to use a light meter if you have one as if you use auto
exposure that will change depending upon the area of your product in relation to the white
sweep. That way you won't blow out any hightlights and spend less time correcting the
images. You could put an 18% grey card in the shop and spot read it from the camera.

I know more information than you needed!

[Nestor Fernandez]

I know more information than you needed!

Maybe, but all good info. Thanks! I've looked at some DIY pages and have planned on building a box, but I needed to get these pictures up asap because a potential customer wanted to see the colors available.

When I have a bit more time I'll definitely be looking into the build.

[Dan Hintz]

For about $40 eBay provided me with a 2' photo cube, multiple colored backgrounds, and two lights on tripods.

[Nestor Fernandez]

Definitely going to look into it.

[Zlatan Vuckovic]

Nestor where did you get the night light part?

[Nestor Fernandez]

I got the blue sample at a local KMart, but when we noticed that it worked out so well, we search high and low and ended up ordering some more from Jasco Products.

[Larry Bratton]

Marty,
I tried the agate thing but the laser wouldn't leave a mark. Thought there was a problem. Is there a trick to it ?

Don, At the risk of high jacking this thread, I will offer this. I have never done any of it, but I do know one thing, it is as hard as granite. I would suspect you would use a setting similar, I use 40p/100s @300dpi, with 40watt Epilog for granite. Just a guess though.

[Richard Rumancik]

Be aware that promo products (ASI) are a hard sell... margins are extremely thin . . . .

What makes you say that Dan? I know a guy who is a promotional products dealer; he let me go to a show that was basically for dealers. The markup can be pretty good in my opinion, the trick is in getting the customers and the volume. They have catalogs with everything imaginable, and there are always companies wanting to do a promotion of some sort.

The promo products guys spend all their time marketing the product; then they order from a company that will do all the "dirty work" as in pad print, screen print, dye sub, laser engrave, etc. I get the occasional job from this dealer for onsie-twosies, but since he gets most of his stuff marked by his supplier, there is not much opportunity for me to get work in this manner. But I think the promotional products business itself can make some money if you know how to sell. Personally I don't like selling and like manufacturing . . . to each his own. (But I still need to sell or there's nothing to manufacture.) I doubt I could compete with a promotional products dealer, however, as they can get their stuff marked at very low cost. The companies that supply the dealers buy tons of ware at a time and have low costs to mark the items. This leaves quite a bit of room for some markup for the dealer.

I am not sure of the advantages of ASI if you just want to get blank ware. A lot of the catalogs if I recall correctly show prices including marking as they are assuming the promo products dealer can't do it. So if you buy unmarked ware, you have probably paid for the laser engraving (for example) but still have to do it yourself. There are probably general "importers" that can sell blank ware that could be marked/printed/sandcarved etc. as an alternative to ASI. At least that's my take on it.

[Martin Boekers]

Typically the mark up is 30%-50%

For most even the artwork prep is marked up.
If you do the art yourself you can make more.

You get set up with samples (usually no charge)
Blanks, you don't pay the engraving or set up fees
and minimums are usually smaller. The thing with
buying blanks from them you have a larger selection
of items as there are more manufacturers making
and marketing promo items. Promotions are a bigger
market so it goes to figure that there would be more
products available.

The thing that is cool about there pricing is all the catalogs
are retail priced with a code at the end that explains your cost.
So you don't have to look it up in a seperate book trying to make
sure you customer doesn't realize what you pay.

Search ASI pricing codes and it will explain it.

You have to be a salesman and have a good network. There
is money to be made. Like anything else though it is work.

Many of the local shops sell ASI as they see it as an extension
of their product line.