Cowbells Ring in Business A rush on cowbells? That's what helped Advantage Graphics, Portland, Ore., increase its promotional business by approximately 5 percent. Advantage Graphics is a full-service graphics company specializing in traditional business forms, laser forms, digital printing, integrated labels, design services and inventory management. That work represents 95 percent of its business. The balance is promotional work, including corporate apparel and promotional products, a market it entered three years ago. Mike Klenz, president and owner of Advantage Graphics, has been sending reminders to existing clients, making them aware of the new offering. One client already had a resource for promotional products and told Klenz it didn't plan to change vendors. "I wasn't aggressively trying to get their promotional business, but I had been reminding them for years," Klenz says. One Wednesday, Klenz received a panicked call from the client, who needed a giveaway for a bike race it was sponsoring on Saturday. The client's long-time supplier couldn't deliver because of the short timeframe—three days—and the small quantity— 75 units. "They realized on Wednesday that they didn't have any giveaway items for the attendees," Klenz says. "Somebody [in the client's company] thought someone else was handling it and it turns out no one was. The customer called me to see if we could pull a rabbit out of a hat. They remembered that I was trying to get their promotional products business from them." To make matters more challenging, the client didn't know what it wanted. "Neither my contact person nor I had any knowledge of bike racing, but while we were talking, the idea of noisemakers along the race route came up," Klenz says. "From there, we remembered that cowbells are popular along bike and ski routes in Europe." Klenz then used promotional products source database SAGE and found that manufacturer Belle Arbor, Farmingdale, N.Y., could ship 3 1/2 x 3-inch metal cowbells overnight on Thursday for a Friday delivery. The client was impressed and awarded Advantage Graphics all of its promotional business, Klenz says, boosting the company's promotional sales from 5 percent of total sales to approximately 10 percent. "Have a can-do attitude and the right tools in place to seize opportunities when they arise," he says.