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Vistaprint Launches New Promo Product Service

Vistaprint, a global e-commerce seller of promotional products and printed marketing materials, has a new service that empowers businesses to receive a box of custom-branded promotional products each month. Called Promobox, Vistaprint announced the service this summer, noting that design work is included in the offering.

According to Vistaprint, which is owned by Top 40 distributor Cimpress (asi/162149), each customer that signs up for Promobox will receive three to five custom-designed products every month. Potential products run the gamut from T-shirts, mugs, pens, polos, smartphone cases and tote bags to postcards, rack cards, pre-inked stamps, window decals, banners and more.

“The Promobox service is here to inspire small-business owners with different ways to market themselves that they may not have previously considered,” says Kara Howard, Vistaprint’s senior vice president of global marketing.

Vistaprint was offering Promobox at a charge of $5 for the first shipment. Each subsequent monthly shipment costs $24.99, the Promobox website states. Shipping is included in the cost. Vistaprint says cancelations are allowed at any time.

To use Promobox, customers complete a short survey about their design preferences and the nature of their business, upload a logo, and choose a color scheme and font. Vistaprint designers take this information to create a box of unique products each month, requiring no additional design work from the customer. Vistaprint then ships items monthly. The design offering and recurring monthly shipment are boons for busy small-business owners, especially those who find it difficult to maintain “brand visibility through marketing and graphic design” while operating their businesses, Vistaprint says.

“I’m not a marketing person; I’m not a graphic artist. I sell travel,” Promobox customer Tonya Girouard, owner of Arrange This Travel, said in a press release put out by Vistaprint. “All of those items [in my Promobox delivery] were things I have wanted to try. I just didn’t know how to put it together and they did that.”

Promobox represents another competitive threat to traditional promotional products distributors in a marketplace that is being increasingly disrupted by web-based sellers of promotional products. Last month, for example, news broke about Walmart Promoshop, an e-commerce website where anyone can buy promotional products.

With estimated 2016 North American promotional product revenue of $225 million, Cimpress ranked 8th on Counselor’s 2017 list of the largest distributors in the promo industry.