Joe Bennett's China adventure; where do undies come from?

Joe Bennett has taken a trip to China that has changed his perspective on manufacturing, his book Where Underpants Come From tracks the production of underpants from the cotton field to final product. The article can be found here.

China earthquake, how can we help?

One of my suppliers sent me the below email yesterday, they are located in Shenzen, so not directly affected by the earthquake they are rallying their customers to raise funds for their local Red Cross.

At times like these one can be cynical and state the obvious they are using a disaster as a marketing tool, but on the flip side they are actually making an effort to help out.

"Dear Alex

Thank you for your long time support our factory.

Just since deadliest earthquake happened in Si Chuan Province ,China,and the whole Chinese people did try their best to do something for Chinese quake-afflicted people.

We ,as a company in shenzhen,China , really desire to do some contribituation to the victims,so our company descided that usd0.1 of per piece unit price for all orders qty ,which will be closed in this month ,will be denoted to the Shenzhen Red Cross assotiation.Of course, for this time, our price is better and very competive with best quality.

Hoping you will support us ,also expect that the place which occured earthquake will recover as soon as possible.

Pls find attached this week offer sheet for your reference.

Thank you so much for your kind attention.And hope all of our friends can do our best to save the victims.

Thank you for all the enthusiastic friends!"

Web info on promotional marketing

Searching for background information on the promotional marketing industry has been difficult on the internet but I have come across some interesting pages as of late the first is on Wikipedia. And from there I found some other pages that are starting to give me a broader understanding on the history of this industry.

The reason for looking into this is to try and find common themes and products that work well, and have stood the test of time, so that we can use this data to serve our customers and there brands more effectively.

this article is interesting even though it is focused on the US market.

If you have had a good promotional product experience share it with us, so we can help more businesses spend their dollars on products that work!