Advertising Specialty Institute Names Corporate Express Promotional Marketing Industry Leader
News Release
Contact:
Anne McKeough—VP Sales and Marketing
Corporate Express Promotional Marketing
314.692.3039
Advertising Specialty Institute Names Corporate Express Promotional Marketing Industry Leader
Corporate Express Promotional Marketing Number One in Brand Merchandise Sales
St. Louis, Missouri, July 14, 2006 — Corporate Express Promotional Marketing was named the industry's number one distributor by the Advertising Specialty Institute in Counselor magazine's annual "State Of The Industry" report. The report appeared in Counselor's July issue and covers industry trends for brand merchandise suppliers and distributors during calendar year 2005. Long ranked in the top five, Corporate Express Promotional Marketing grew 14% in 2005 to earn the industry's number one position.
"Sales volume is just part of the story," according to Dennis Multack, Corporate Express Promotional Marketing's President. He attributes Corporate Express Promotional Marketing's steady growth to their market focus: full-service programs, built with the latest technology, and customized for each Fortune 1000 client. "Our target market wants more than just merchandise," he says. "We give them creative merchandise programs with consistent product and operational quality, fast distribution, and advanced systems that enable us to partner with them to analyze and control spending. This gives us a tremendous edge in keeping our customers happy and signing new business. And once our program is in place, it naturally grows due to its reliability, ease-of-use, and its integration with the client's systems."
Anne McKeough, Vice President Sales and Marketing, added that the variety and creativity of their programs also contributed to the number one ranking. "Our relationships tend to grow in scope," she says. "One program leads to an opportunity for another." Corporate Express Promotional Marketing's full-service brand merchandise programs include Web-based In-Stock Merchandise Catalogs, Custom Order products and Performance Solutions such as Service Award and Safety Incentive programs. "The number one ranking is especially gratifying," McKeough continued, "because it caps a year when we won industry awards for creativity in the U.S., Canada and Australia."
A high client retention rate reinforces the company's sales gains. They maintain several client relationships that started over a decade ago, and have exceeded a 94% retention rate over the past five years.
Corporate Express Promotional Marketing is poised to continue its momentum according to Multack. "We have a great team and continue to make significant capital expenditures that add value for all of our stakeholders, including clients, suppliers, and employees. We have also launched a new business model focused on large companies outside the Fortune 1000."
About Corporate Express Promotional Marketing
Headquartered in St. Louis, Corporate Express Promotional Marketing specializes in centralized brand merchandise programs for the Fortune 1000. Its turnkey programs include Web-based In-Stock Merchandise Catalogs, Custom Order products and Performance Solutions such as Incentive and Recognition programs. Corporate Express Promotional Marketing is a wholly-owned division of Corporate Express — A Buhrmann company. The company offers full program services in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, and manages 140 brand merchandise programs for 90 clients worldwide.
About Counselor™ magazine
Counselor is published by the Advertising Specialty Institute. For fifty years, the magazine has been the leading source of news in the promotional products industry. The unique position of ASI in the marketplace gives their editors and reporters an unmatched perspective, which translates into the most insightful and readable magazine in the industry.
About the Advertising Specialty Institute®
ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute®) is the largest media organization serving the promotional products industry, with a membership of 21,000 distributor firms (sellers) and supplier firms (manufacturers) of promotional products. Supplier firms use ASI print and electronic resources to market products to more than 18,000 distributor firms. Distributor firms use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 750,000 promotional products, to locate supplier firms and to market services to end-buyers (promotions and advertising buyers). It provides catalogs, information directories, newsletters, magazines, websites, trade shows, databases, and interactive e-commerce, marketing and selling tools.
