The Importance Of Being A Trade Exclusive Supplier Of Personalised Pens

Since its inception over 12 years ago The Pen Warehouse has been a trade-only supplier of pens or more to the point Personalised Pens and promotional pens.

We are now the leading pen supplier to the trade, particularly in the UK  and we owe our success to the loyal support of our distributors spread across the length and breadth of the country. Our success is based on trust and we believe that this will hold us in good stead for the future. We are certainly in a very changing world as far as the distribution of promotional gifts go, particularly because of the internet. My own sales training many years ago was based on customer-facing skills and how to turn leads into orders. Today, as far as the internet goes those skills are largely irrelevant as online business is very impersonal. Today, success on the internet depends on a different skill-set; largely technical because of search engine optimisation and everything that surrounds it. Our job as a trade supplier however, remains the same as it is largely a backroom supporting role for our distributors. It is true that certain adaptations had to be made to support the type of distributor that trades online but fundamentally things have not changed at all. It still boils down to good service, great prices and choice. However, it is easy to get carried away with the importance of online business as it is still a very small percentage of the total business being done. Distributors, in the main have a good rapport with their customers and enjoy a good percentage of repeat business where prices are less sensitive. Whether you trade online, sell through traditional means or a bit of both it matters little to us here at The Pen Warehouse – it boils down to the fact that our pedigree as a trade-exclusive supplier is unrivalled.

We are beginning to see the emergence of several ‘cloaking’ companies on the internet purporting to be independent distributors but are in actual fact end-user arms of trade suppliers that don’t wish to be seen jumping ship – just yet anyway. That may be the subject of a future article so keep tuned into our newsroom here at www.pens.co.uk – the home of printed pens for business.