A Helpful Guide to Promotional Bags

When it comes to attending an event, exhibition, trade show, and you need a personalised giveaway for your business or you are just generally looking to personalise a nice gift to giveaway as a thank you to your clients, let’s face it the list of potential ideas is endless, you can flick through tons of websites and promotional products catalogues and instantly view thousands of branded giveaways to suit a whole range of budgets.

Something that we find is very often overlooked by many customers when ordering there promotional giveaways is how they are actually going to present these to their customers. For example if a company wanted to order an executive branded parker jotter ballpen and personalised Moleskine Notebook for there field sales team to take and giveaway to top clients in meetings this would be a great idea and very highly perceived and effective branded giveaways but is the sales person supposed to just walk into the clients office with the notebook and parker pen just tucked under his arm? Providing a way of presenting these branded gifts would take the perceived value much higher by presenting them in a form of packaging, or more appropriately in this case in a Branded Promotional Bag!

Promotional bags are one of our best selling and most popular promotional products due to there practicality and usefulness in today's society, however, when looking for branded bags with your company logo branded onto them there are so many styles, shapes, sizes, branding methods, and materials to choose from it really can be difficult to know which is going to be the most effective branded bag to giveaway for your campaign or event. So this week we have decided to put together this helpful guide to some of our most popular promotional bags to provide a little more insight as to the pro’s, the con’s, and the ideal uses for some of our branded bags.

First up is our all time best selling printed bag, the 5oz Natural Cotton Tote Bag. Promotional Cotton Tote bags have always been a popular branded giveaway due to there low cost and usefulness for a wide variety of people however since the government introduced a new scheme that meant supermarkets and large stores across the UK had to charge 5p for each carrier bag that they provided shoppers with back in October 2015 the rise of the reusable tote bags personalised with company logos and contact details began! Companies realised that people became frustrated with the constant 5p charge for each bag of shopping and so more and more people became grateful to be able to take their own re-useable cotton shopper bags into the store with them to save on the 5p carrier bag charge. And with plans by the Environment Secretary to further increase the plastic bag charge to 10p by January 2020 it looks as though the value of receiving a freebie branded bag will only become greater.

When it comes to choosing a branded tote bag we can produce 3oz tote bags all the upto 12oz + bags. For anyone that isn’t aware Oz or Ounces of a cotton bag refers to the weight of the cotton spun that creates each square yard of the base of the bags material. Oz is a measurement of the bags fabric density but not actually the weight of the bag itself which is important to bear in mind. In simple terms, when referring to printed cotton bags the higher the oz the thicker the feel of the bag.

The 5oz printed tote bag has cotton sturdy, stitched in handles which when dropped down are 26cm in length which allows this tote to be slung over your shoulder when out shopping. Screen Printing Cotton Tote Bags is our standard branding method as this allows the best value for money and the most durable, long lasting printing method when printing onto cotton bags.

• Low cost printed bags, perfect for giveaway bags on a budget
• Offer a large screen print area on either one or two sides of 310mm x 280mm
• Tote Bags will often be taken home and used frequently by homeowners when at the weekly supermarket shop, therefore promoting your brand on a weekly basis!
• Good for the environment, rather than printing traditional plastic carrier bags, giving away promotional cotton tote bags shows your business is doing there bit for the environment

• Cotton Shoppers do not have an internal pockets, it is just one open main compartment so unfortunately if you put change of money inside then sometimes this can easily get lost at the bottom of your tote bag.
• Unfortunately they aren’t waterproof so it isn’t ideal if you get stuck out in the rain!
• If you need a coloured cotton shopper bag, these do cost a few pence more per unit than the natural cotton totes.

• Low cost exhibition bags to put brochures, flyers, and other marketing collateral inside and hand out on your exhibition stand personalised with your logo.
• University giveaway bags for students, cotton tote bags are very popular with university students and lecturers who have a large amount of folders and stationery to carry around the campus with them each day and they are proud to promote the university logo as they are proud to have worked hard enough to study at that University.
• Re-sale merch bags for Artists and Designers who want to print there creative illustrations onto a cotton tote bag love these bags with a beautiful screen print on.

Many people often refer to as ‘The Selfridges Style printed bags’ is what we like to call the Luxury Rope Handle Bags. These thick card, full colour digitally printed luxury bags are most certainly retail quality with many high street retailers opting to produce this style of gift bag for there brands rather than the traditional polythene carrier bags as they just have that luxury, high end, feel about them.

Printed Rope Handle Bags are available in a wide range of different sizes such as oversize A5 rope handle bags, oversize A4 portrait rope handle bags, large exhibition A3 rope handle bags and even bespoke sizes if required, the great thing about rope handle laminated bags is that they are produced made to order and so the level of customisation and personalisation is unrivalled by other promotional giveaway bags. As standard the bags come supplied with short white rope handles however we can also customise the handle colours and handle lengths to your bespoke requirements.

• Rope Handle Bags provide a high end, executive style of promotional bag for your event or conference.
• Fully customisable with your choice of coloured fitted rope handles to suit your brand guidelines.
• Available in a wide range of sizes and orientations, A5, A4, A3, Landscape, Portrait, etc.
• Manufactured in the UK!

• Because rope handle personalised bags are usually made to order and have a large amount of hand finishing involved the production time from receiving your order and artwork is usually between 7-10 working days and so this style of branded bag for your event isn't always a viable option if you have a tight deadline.
• Obviously with being paper based with a matt or gloss lamination these rope handle carrier bags aren’t going to withstand being carried around outside during a UK winter storm unfortunately!

• Luxury Retail Bags for shops and clothing stores to give to customers after purchasing something from there store.
• Exhibition Printed Bags with either a gloss of matt lamination to the outside of the bag to hand out as sponsors branded bags at exhibitions and trade shows.
• Field sales teams company merchandise goodie bags to take into clients as gift bags.

Printed Drawstring bags are a hugely popular promotional sports bag and are constructed from nylon material and are fitted with black drawstring and have reinforced imitation leather corners where the ropes are affixed to for increased durability.

• Our budget nylon printed drawstring bags can be printed and delivered within just 48 hours of receiving your order and artwork approval, making this one of our fastest delivery promotional bags so perfect for those last minute rush requests.
• Drawstring bags are available in a range of stock colours and high stock levels of each colour are always held due to personalised drawstring bags being so popular so that we can always meet those last minute event deadlines.

• Drawstring bags aren’t so popular as a corporate branded giveaway so we would suggest a rope handle bag or perhaps a cotton shopper tote bag for this.
• If for example you are a cricket club, a branded club drawstring bag may not be large enough to hold all of the equipment that you require for the game so in this case we would suggest one of our large sports holdall bags for large sports equipment branded bags.

• School’s love Printed Drawstring Bags personalised with the school logo to give out to children and students.
• Drawstring bags are a great practical giveaway for sports clubs, gyms, and leisure centres for members to use as kit bags to carry there towels, water bottles, and sports kit to and from the club whilst promoting the club to attract new members who also share a love for the same sport.