Q. What is your turnaround time on an order?

A. It varies. We are able to get many of our products in 1-2 days, sometimes same day. Glass and crystal, however, can take up to a week, since many of these suppliers are on the West Coast, although we do have some in Kentucky and Michigan. There is ALWAYS the option of expedited freight if you are in a hurry, so be sure to let us know your needs and we will explore ALL options. It is our goal to make your schedule happen. Generally, however, try to give us 3-5 days for plaques or acrylics if possible. On glass and crystal, 10 business days works great, and we generally make it happen quicker. For the big cups, 5-7 business days since many of these cups come from Canada. Promotional Products are a different animal, and turnaround times will be specified with those items.

Q. I'm confused. What is the difference between your products and "Promotional Products"?

A. Because of the higher minimum quantities on Promotional Product items, pricing for these products is very competitive. (Yes, many of OUR products can be considered "Promotional Products" but we produce them in-house in smaller quantities.) For instance, we offer laser engraved pens that we buy in small quantities and we do the engraving in-house. Minimum quantity of 1. That one pen may cost $15 (just as an example). But you may also be able to order 150 of the same pens for $2 each through our Promotional Products section. These are products we market and sell for our third party suppliers, and they are produced in large minimum quantities and imprinted at their factories, then shipped to us ready to deliver to you. Their products are sold through us, and we monitor production, copy, proofs and scheduling for you - but the job is actually produced by our third party supplier. These are items our customers typically order for trade shows, or leave-behinds for their sales staff to distribute, whereas the small quantity items that we do in-house may be to mark an anniversary for a specific individual, where the customer only needs one piece. For this reason we have a separate  promotional products search engine on our website and in our navigation bar, and we order from a database of hundreds of suppliers, through our special licensing and membership as promotional marketing distributors.

Q. What about trophies?

A. The only rush charges we pass on to you on our store items are shipping charges if an order has to be shipped other than ground (2nd day, next day, etc). Gas prices and shipping charges have affected us all, and all of our unfinished product is shipped from our suppliers standard UPS ground. Because we are a home-based business, our schedules are flexible so once you place an order with us, we are committed to making it happen, even if that means getting it done at 2am! So our charges will not change. Promotional Products are a little different, and those suppliers often have multi-tiered delivery schedules and rates in order to accommodate rush orders. We will let you know about these charges up front so you can decide how fast you need the order to happen.

Q. Where are you located? Can I come pick something out?

A. We are home-based in Cary, off Cary Parkway. We do not have a showroom setup on site - the web page is our showroom! We do have some samples here, and some of our customers do like to get a sense of what the etching looks like or the engraving on the acrylic. If you feel you really need this, we will certainly set up a time and give you directions to come over and meet with us. But after 5 years in a showroom and now over  four years working from home, we have found it saves our customers valuable time to order online, and have proofs emailed to them, rather than taking time out of their day to do this. We are also happy to search our database for you and email additional options if you do not find exactly what you want on our site.

Q. What do you charge for engraving?

A. We have tried to build average engraving and etching costs into our prices. Exceptions are logos and photographs, which have more involved preparation. Also color-fill and multi-stage carving (deep etching) have additional charges based on time, materials, and complexity. And on perpetual plaques there will be a per-plate charge on the individual plates engraved at the time the plaque is ordered. Note that we said "average" costs - depending on the size of the plaque or item being engraved. A good rule of thumb can be 20-30 words, less on smaller objects. A lot of the items shown on our site have an engraved sample in the photograph to give you an idea. We will also let you know up front once we receive your copy and order if we think there will be an additional charge. Note that if you compare our pricing to a mall based store like Things Remembered, you might think our prices our high but thier advertised prices don't include engraving, where ours do. Promotional Products (third party) have setup charges that are spelled out in their quotes.

Q. But I would really like my logo on the piece! Can you do it?

A. Yes! There is a one-time charge to prepare your logo for engraving or etching. This is normally $25-$35, and we must have a good, hi resolution file to work from. Our preferences are Corel (X3 or lower), or Adobe Illustrator (version 10 or lower) vector files (.ai or .eps). We also work in Photoshop. NO MAC FILES, and NO WORD FILES! By high resolution we mean at least 300 dots/lines per inch (dpi). This is a one-time charge, so once we have prepared your logo to work with our systems, there will not be a charge for using the logo, and we will guarantee it for 3 years or we will redo it at our expense. For Promotional Products, all setup charges are spelled out up front.

Q. I'd really like to see what this is going to look like. Is there a way to see a proof before you start engraving?

A. We email pdf proofs on just about all our pieces for approval before we engrave. Be sure to proofread it carefully in addition to looking at the layout! The exception is maybe a small plate which we might not show a proof unless you specifically request it, but we will always let you know. If we are in a time crunch, help us by expediting approval - the sooner we can get you back in production the better! Some of our glass items have curvature, which is hard to judge on a proof, but that part you'll just have to trust us on. Otherwise, know that we are extremely particular (picky!) and we want everything we do to look awesome, so we will use our skills to this end. If we look good, you look good! And, most importantly, we always want you to come back!

Q. I'd like to setup an account and have you bill me.

A. We are a small company so we do not setup accounts on billing. We sometimes are able to make an exception on regular corporate accounts with a commitment to pay Net 10, but this is only after we have an existing business relationship. Most of our corporate accounts give us their credit card to keep on file and we charge that credit card for the order. For large orders, particularly glass, crystal, and acrylics, we must have at least a 50% deposit, no exceptions. Our suppliers get paid when we order from them, so we in turn must be able to cover those charges by your prepayment. Promotional Products are actually billed through our licensing organization, so we need payment or a credit card up front, or credit approval in order to bill as an open account. On promotional product orders we will give you a freight estimate up front, and then any adjustments will be made on the back end (final invoicing).

Q. How does your online payment system work?

A. First and foremost, our system is SECURE! This was a critical issue for us and has taken us a couple years to gain enough confidence ourselves before we could open this up to our customers. Your protection is of utmost importance to us! There are a couple payment options. One is PayPal, and if you choose that option you will be prompted on screen and transferred to the PayPal site where you will conduct that payment, and come back to our site to finalize the order. That is an immediate transaction. PayPal transfers the money from your account to ours when you pay through their secure site. On the other hand, if you choose to pay by credit card, you will enter all your credit card information on our secure site and once we receive the order and confirm everything, we then process your card. Regardless of the payment option you choose, we will send you a final invoice via email once we receive and confirm your order. And the only items not covered in the initial online order payment is the shipping, since there may be expedited shipping charges if you requested a rush order, or final shipping charges since we don't have that cost until we actually ship your order (so those charges will be applied when the job is ready to ship).

Q. Is everything on your site available - ie, in stock?

A. Unfortunately, we cannot control our suppliers' inventory. And we do not keep much inventory or we would need a huge warehouse! Not to mention the cost of inventory! But we will contact our supplier when you place your order and check availability immediately, and advise you just as quickly if there is a problem. Glass and crystal, for example, comes to our suppliers from overseas, so we always check. And we have several sources for most items, so if one supplier is out of stock, we will jump on Plan B! If this doesn't work, Plan C would be to contact you and give you some other options or a schedule for that item to become available, if that is an option. But you can be assured this happens right away, when your order is placed, not the day before your presentation!

Q. It says on your site that you offer delivery?

A. Yes! This is part of our "concierge" service to you! We are all over Cary, Raleigh, RTP - we've even delivered in Chapel Hill and Zebulon! We try to schedule our drive time to maximize out productivity, so we group our deliveries by area as well as by your schedule. Depending on what your need is and what we have in production. Sometimes we may ask to meet you halfway, deliver to your home or office, or even have you pickup here (Cary). Our top priority is for you to have the piece on time, so we will work that out to make it happen for you. But the gas crisis has affected all of us, so we generally do not deliver orders under $100 or we can deliver them but apply a marginal delivery charge to offset our gas expenses.