For the past two years I have been organising Webconf.asia, a conference featuring great talks with practical advice from international web experts.
Quite often people ask me where I got my stickers, banners or print work done. I am a big fan of sourcing locally, support your local dealer. This quite will come in handy if you’re based in Hong Kong, China or Asia.
It seems you can find these three combined in China: Fast, Cheap and Good.
Once I have found a supplier, I usually exchange a few emails back and forth to see if they understand what I mean, are reliable and can meet my requirements.
In Alibaba you can set an MOQ(minimum order quantity). Quite often I get disappointed because I only need 200 items maximum, which is, in general, a pretty low number for these companies. If you’re looking for lower quantities make sure you fill in a low MOQ.
With low quantities, it’s hard to bargain.
Things get lost in translation. I always send them a lot of pictures with arrows and text.
Quite often suppliers can send you some samples for free when you pay the postage. Postage from China to Hong Kong is only a few euro. If you’re based in Asia, ask them to send it through SF Express.
Quite often they want to take the conversation outside of Alibaba, worked fine with me, haven’t been ripped off once.
I prefer to pay by PayPal, you can ask them to send you a payment request.
Stickers
I am super happy withStickerHD. They are based in Taiwan. I have been using their‘Die cut stickers’. Their pricing is lower than Stickermule and the quality is super high.
They send you a proof and they think along with you.
Banners
TJBanner made these huge banners and some smaller ones too. I was super happy with them. Their prices are competitive and their product range is very large. They havea website too.
If you don’t feel like going through Alibaba, they can send you a PDF with their products too. Or send them a picture as a sample. I have been dealing with Fiona and she was excellent.
Some tips:
Stickers
Banners
Lanyards