I get a ton of cold calls.  I refer most to the individual responsible for "that" function like Lucy, AJ or Gusty.  Lucy is my lab.  AJ is my mother's Lhasa (sp?) and Gusty is my 2 year old niece.  Each one of my team has a distinct skill set for their function. So, I make sure to give their name out often for services like long distance coverage, copier toner and business consultants.  That way, when they inevitably sell our name (cause for some reason AJ is napping), the new company will have the perfect individual in their contact list. 

this happened a couple weeks ago and was big news in the promo-products world.  Staples (everyone knows this company) bought American Identity.  American Idenity is an old big company that sells promotional products to fortune 500 companies through a personal sales force.  funny thing is, staples' typical customer is small businesses that must travel to a staples store in order to buy office supplies.  these seem to be opposite ends of the market but the 'contract' chief (staples big business division that personally sells to larger companies) was the staples representative quoted in the press release. 

couple thoughts:
1. American Identity was owned by a private equity company and the debt market is less than favorable so it was likely a distress sale for AI.
2. Staples has a ton of cash on its books it needs to put to work as evidenced by their stock buyback announcement yesterday
3. staples has always wanted into the promo-products business as evidenced by their recent relationship with Awards.com (the company that sued kinkos for $900mm.
4. American Identity is likely getting their butt kicked by smaller promo-products guys that have little overhead and rock-bottom pricing from Broder (the big apparel supplier in our industry).  Broder has flattened pricing so much that there is only a few percentage points pricing advantage to be a larger customer (we know this first-hand).  this makes it easy for any home-based, part-time broker or embroiderer to compete "on price" with $200mm companies like American Identity that has overhead, legacy costs, salesperson commissions, etc.  its becoming more of a cottage industry and maybe AI thinks they can out-market the little guys with Staples extensive list of customers and locations.

What a shock!  they came out with printed tees.  even VistaPrint got 'em out faster.

AND, they "extended" their no minimums until July 31st!  WOW.  in response, we were thinking of sending out an email promoting we extended our no minimum offer until July 31st.......2009!