Laura Brannan has taken up the role of Supplier Relationship Manager at GeigerBTC and will be working closely with Jason Darbyshire who joined the company as Marketing Director in 2018.
Jason commented: “We have great suppliers who give us amazing support and with Laura on board we can now take our supplier relationship to a new level”.
Laura brings more than 6 years’ experience in the promotional merchandise industry and will focus on building and maintaining stronger supplier relationships for GeigerBTC.
Commenting on her new role, Laura said ‘I am excited to join the team during this period of growth. I look forward to building collaborative relationships with our suppliers so that GeigerBTC becomes a company which, through its practices, positions itself to receive the best access to ideas, resources, and innovations from its suppliers, and that will ensure that we continue to offer the best service to our clients’.
GeigerBTC is the largest privately owned promotional products distributor in the UK. We deliver global merchandise programs and clothing, enhancing customers’ brands worldwide, with a large in-house print and embroidery division. For more information visit https://www.geigerbtc.com or call +44 (0)20 8569 2250.
Probably the single most popular technology concept is what has been christened ‘true wireless stereo or TWS‘ or more simply the ability to pair two Bluetooth audio devices to each other to create wireless stereo for listening to music. Most popular items at the show with this feature were for sure micro Bluetooth earbuds and of course small and not so small travel speakers. Such products simply turn on, one device takes the lead and pairs to the other and then your phone/tablet/laptop and you can enjoy great stereo sound. 
Power banks and charging cables still dominate the shows with a myriad of new styles, sizes and prices on display. The market does seem a little flooded in this area with some slowdown in interest, as often it’s been ‘done and seen before.’ However cool and unique models still have the power to wow! Excuse the pun… 
USB C hubs and connectivity solutions were probably one of the surprise products areas, as hubs had slowed down in terms of interest a few years ago. However the rapid introduction now of USB type C connectivity into many new laptops is driving a new interest in good quality hubs that can be fed from a USB C port and then power/sync data with 3-4 older style USB A accessories (such as flash drives/mice etc) HDMI and or other ports built into a handy travel gadget often with a great branding area. 
Fitness trackers, smart watches and colour display ‘activity bands’ are making a big come back! After a rapid rise to consumer focus and then slight slowdown over the last 12months, the tracker and Smartwatch are now very popular with most major consumer brands having them made for them. Many of these brands have added a colour screen bringing a new dimension to the product. Many factories are developing this style and with competitive prices, smart and colourful two-tone bands and professional APPS – software’s and even GPS bundled in this is an area to watch and stay close too. 
Wireless Charging is an amazing phenomenon simply on the basis that the execution of this technology has been around for a while now in many of our houses; we just never questioned it before. Electric toothbrushes have been using inductive charging for quite a long time, but because of low efficiency rates, it was limited to these bathroom appliances due to the fact that nobody really cared if it took an excessive amount of time to charge their electric toothbrush. Over the last decade or so the technology started gaining traction, more research was being done in this area and it was introduced in more and more devices. Exactly ten years ago the Wireless Power Consortium was established and they introduced the QI standard for wireless charging.
The introduction of a standard was a key boost the technology needed to start gaining mainstream traction, and we started seeing it appear in a variety of products on the consumer electronics market, especially in smartphones. Fast forward to 2017 and some of the largest smartphone manufacturers are already using QI standard wireless charging and have been for a couple of years, but the key shift to mainstream comes through the introduction of wireless charging in the Apple iPhone devices. You can think what you like about Apple, love them or not, they know mobile peripherals and since the inclusion of wireless charging on the iPhone we have seen this technology take off not only in the consumer market, but in the world of promotional products also.
But what is Wireless Charging? To get a full idea we need to go all the way back to 1891 where Nikola Tesla demonstrated that he could power an electric lamp without wires. Modern wireless power utilises the same principles Tesla did all those years ago, through the use of electromagnetic induction. To simplify how wireless charging works all you really need to understand is there are two main devices involved in the process, a ‘transmitter’ (wireless charging pads), and a ‘receiver’ (smart device with wireless charging technology). The ‘transmitter’ device is constantly outputting a harmless electromagnetic transmission (when switched on) searching for a ‘receiver’ device. When the ‘receiver’ device enters this field the devices interact with each other and a concentrated current is transmitted from ‘transmitter’ to ‘receiver’ and thus the charging process begins.
With great power, comes great responsibility and unfortunately since the growth of the wireless charger, this has also led to an increase in low quality, counterfeit wireless charging products which are irresponsibly cheap in price, but the actual cost could be much higher. In the last few years, attention has been drawn to cheap and low quality Powerbanks, where in several cases the device overheats, causes fires and in some cases has exploded, the same is the case with cheaply made wireless devices. The previously mentioned Wireless Power Consortium are combatting this with the rigorous tests that surround QI certification. The WPC tests specific properties through multiple procedures, receivers have 10 properties tested and transmitters have 17, these tests validate compatibility and safety.
Not long now till April arrives and the April showers are upon us, but let’s face it we live in the UK, no matter what month or season it is, you can pretty much guarantee it will rain at some point. Which is why I was surprised when the statistics highlighted that the UK was actually below the world average on number of umbrellas owned per capita. I had almost expected in a country world renowned for its rain, that each person would be recorded owning in the region of 4-5 umbrellas!
From a business point of view, there aren’t many promotional products out there with as much branding surface area as an umbrella. One great feature the umbrella has is it is not just the branding you can adjust to your specification, there are several features that you can have bespoke to your branding, giving your promotional product a more executive feel. You can adjust the grip, the pole, the contrast colour and even have fully dye sublimated panels for an all over brand.
Elon Musk is definitely a man who needs no introduction, engineer, inventor, magnate, billionaire, visionary… the list goes on! He is most recently renowned for being CEO of electric car company Tesla, and his aspirational aerospace program SpaceX which successfully launched the Falcon Heavy Rocket this week! Elon has stated that all his professional goals revolve around his want to revolutionise the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming, creating sustainable energy, reducing the risk of human extinction and taking life to the solar system through establishing a human colony on Mars. It is this amazing and eccentric desire that puts him in the forefront of the world’s influencers.
Back in 2016 Elon sent a tweet out to his 18 million followers that he was fed up of traffic as it was ‘driving him nuts.’ He followed this statement up with the fact that he was going to start a company to build a tunnel network under LA, and that he would name it ‘The Boring Company.’ Elon not one to hang around started digging a trench on his SpaceX premises in February 2017. The end game is to have a fully traffic alleviating network of low cost tunnels enabling rapid transport in areas such as LA, New York, Washington DC etc. But what does all this have to do about marketing?
Amongst those who know what personalised marketing is, there is a common misconception that personalised marketing only works in a business to consumer environment. This is totally incorrect as buyers in a business to business environment are people too and are influenced exactly in the same manner as consumer buyers do. Ultimately there is a decision maker in every B2C and B2B purchase, personalised marketing material just need to be adjusted to that decision maker.
providing a customer experience that is unique to that person. As I mentioned in the thank you blog, we are seeing more and more of our manufacturing suppliers investing in machinery that can individually brand names. This trend is laregly down to people wanting to provide this personalised experience for the customer. The great thing a personalised product does is, it adds percieved value to the product. In the UK I specifically remember in my school years how cool it was to have stationary with your name on it, we don’t lose this feeling years later, products just seem to hold, if not a higher monetary value, a higher sentimental value when they have your name on them. Here at BTC Group we obviously love branding, but we definitely love to see branding in unique ways, a fantastic example of this are these amazingly designed personalised calendars. Calendars are always useful, no matter who you are or what job role you are in, organisation is key! Each page has an different design incorporating your name in some way.
Gratitude is a prime example of the saying ‘a little bit can go a long way’ especially in the workplace. According to research from reward gateway, almost half of British workers would leave the company the worked for if they didn’t feel like they were regularly thanked for their efforts. Even more interestingly the majority of people that took the survey said they would rather work for a company that had a culture of incentivising their staff, than a have 10% pay increase. This is an incredibly insightful statistic, but it does make sense, we will spend approximately 35% of our total waking hours during our working years in the workplace, why wouldn’t you want that to be an enjoyable experience? It doesn’t always have to be a monetary incentive; fans of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ know that a simple handshake and acknowledgement for good work can mean more than any other form of gratitude.
This is not just beneficial for the employees, happy employees mean happy business, and happy business means happy customers! Take something as simple as sick leave, happier employees are healthier employees. The 2008 ‘Gallup’s global health study’ managed to quantify the average cost of an unhappy employee. It found that those who are unhappy take significantly more sick leave, staying home on average of 1.25 days more a month! Happy employees not only cost less, they make more money, provide better customer service, are more creative and provide many more benefits, all by showing them regular genuine gratitude.