Q&A: Mark and David from Oasis Empire

What products can be branded?

Almost anything can be branded. You name it and we will brand it. We have supplied everything from your conventional branded pens, mugs, keyrings, lanyards, cotton shoppers and umbrellas through to wellington boots, dog t-shirts, deckchairs and apples.

Can you tell us an interesting project that you’ve been working on recently?

Yes, we have been working with the Worthing Town Centre Initiative and we have just delivered a range of items to help them promote the town over the summer. The products this year include branded sunglasses, branded bucket and spade sets, branded deckchairs, branded beach balls and a fully bespoke branded 3 x 3 metre gazebo. The famous I Love Sunny Worthing cotton tote bags, which we supply every year, will be orange this year. We use a different colour bag each year, as these have now become a bit of a collector’s item. For the Worthing Food Festival in September, we are also supplying all the re-usable plastic branded pint glasses along with lots of printed banners, flags, bunting and of course we will be printing the Food Festival event guides for this event.

What are the lead times like, and do you have minimum orders?

Lead times have reduced greatly over the last few years due to customer requirements and the advances in printing technology. Depending on the products, most things can be delivered in around 2 weeks. We also offer a large selection of items that can be branded and delivered within a few days.
Minimum order quantities vary depending on the product but generally to give you an idea cheaper pens would be from 250 pieces and higher value items like power banks and umbrellas would start from 25. We are happy to give help and advice to anyone who is looking to source branded products as we pride ourselves on suggesting products that are within our clients budget and deliverable on time.

What makes you different from your competitors?

We’d like to think we are very different from our competitors. We are much more pro-active than our competitors. We take the time to understand what our customers are trying to achieve whether that be an awareness campaign, a new product launch or just making sure that their company (and brand) are visible to their own customers.

We offer a free sample and pre-production visual service so that our customers can see the items first- hand rather than crossing their fingers and hoping their expectations are met. For those customers with limited space (and those that want it) we offer a local storage and distribution solution. This can help customers with planning marketing campaigns and can often save them money as we can offer better rates on the larger volume orders. We are happy to discuss these options if this is of interest. We can also offer a fulfilment and mailing service as part of the package.

What do you see as the key growth products this year?

This year we are seeing a large increase in enquires for environmental and green products. The cotton shopper (bag for life) continues to lead the way as the must-have branded product as these offer a great visible branding area. There is also a very high demand for the re-usable coffee cups which are now available in recycled & recyclable plastics and we can even supply these cups manufactured from sustainable bamboo! Last summer saw a massive spike in orders for water bottles, used both internally for staff and the followers of the TV show ‘Love Island’! Having a record heatwave also helped drive sales towards this corner of the market.

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