Disclaimer

About Us:

Who is Giftsandapparel.com?

GiftsandApparel.com was started by seasoned manufacturer reps from the souvenir, gift and apparel industry that saw the need to bring our industry into “cyberspace.” GiftsandApparel.com is designed to serve the souvenir and gift industry as a whole making business online a reality for buyers, reps and manufacturers. By creating a space for the entire industry online we will be able to connect directly with the people we need instead of wading through “cyberspace”. As a rep group we have 9 years experience in the gift industry. Our growth has been steady but last year was our best so far and the web has played a large roll in that. Our various partners skills run the gamut from small business to large corporate management. We have teamed up with experts in the internet world and our goal is to help support our industry with this new format.  

A few years ago, we started to see a real shift in the number of our customers using the Internet for business. It became very clear to us that to stay current with the times and to better serve our customers, we needed some sort of web presence. In the beginning we were not sure how the website could benefit our buyers and our manufacturers. We started by building a website that had our contact information and listed our lines and territories. We also linked to any of our manufacturers that had websites. This simply gave us a very expensive business card online.

What we failed to realize was the only way someone would find our site was if we told them it was there! The odds of someone stumbling on us were practically non-existent. If someone “Googled” gifts and apparel 3 years ago, well over 100,000,000 entries came up …and we were nowhere to be found (type in the same search today and we are 3^rd)! We also discovered that our manufacturers websites were in such a state of neglect that we could not use them to convey information on current product (at one point 2 of our major manufacturers sites were 2 years behind) to our customers.

In spite of this, more customers, reps and manufacturers were beginning to use the web, so we decided to forge ahead. We posted a catalog on our web site that was more up-to-date than our manufacturer’s website. When answering questions over the phone, we were able to look at our site with our customer hundreds of miles away and take care of business.

Since then, we have also been able to

·    keep our customers more up to date on product,

·    view catalogs immediately with customers

·    make both of our businesses more effective

Gifts and Apparel.com was created to drive customers to our website to grow our wholesale Internet business. We still needed to isolate our site from the rest of the Web and get people from our industry to see it. We finally realized that we needed to make a space that was specifically for our industry that would have more power on the web and would draw a crowd. Then we got it! Don’t change the industry …just put it online.

Now, with GiftsandApparel.com, we have a permanent “showroom” in what could be called the world’s largest trade show. People see who we are and who we represent. We can work with customers in person or online. It has given us the extra edge that is helping us to continue to grow our business in a time when commissions are staying the same and the cost of doing business is increasing. Think about it, how much does a trade show cost?  Consider what it costs you for fuel, food, lodging, booth space and your time.