Written by Michael Wolaver, Captain of Magellan Promotions

These past several weeks have been trying for businesses and organizations in varying ways.  At my promotional product company, Magellan Promotions, we moved all employees to being remote, dealt with disruptions in our supply chain, and had orders cancelled. We continue to adapt our practices despite a significant slowdown in business, and are monitoring the tremendous financial impact COVID-19 is having on our core customer base.  While other businesses have it way worse off than ours, we have a number of challenges that we are working to overcome.

Over the past month, we have been inundated with PPE options from production partners, some we are aware of, and others that are new to us.  Most of these products are not imprinted and we have no prior experience to judge the quality. While it is tempting to provide non-branded PPE products when business slows down, our company is using our mission and core values as our compass.  Our company mission is, “Helping build community through promotional product marketing solutions,” and our three core values are relationships, expertise, and innovation.

Our mission guides us to help organizations build their brands and connect with their audiences through smart and impactful imprinted promotional products.  Our core values keep us focused on the fact that relationships are crucial to us. Our clients rely on us to be experts on the solutions we recommend and we are always pushing ourselves to be innovative in using technology, creating new process and coming up with ideas on projects.

What we are providing as solutions in response to COVID-19 are true to who we are as a business.  Our ideas and solutions leverage the knowledge we have about our client’s challenges and we are working closer than ever with our production partners to ensure that each product is delivered as promised.  Popular COVID-19 related products include imprinted hand sanitizers, with ingredients recommended for staving off germs and killing viruses (including COVID-19), and face scarves. In addition, we have also launched online product showrooms to help our clients quickly find solutions for newly-formed challenges.

On several occasions, I have been asked half-jokingly if we offer imprinted face masks.  The honest answer is that it has been an evolution for us. As non-medical grade masks are being recommended for daily use, we are responding to what our clients are seeking, and are working with our trusted production partners to locate suitable product matches.  We are working on both imprinted and blank face covering options to fit the range of requests.

When demand rises for hot new products, the rush to mass production in order to get them to market can create doubts about product quality. We are applying our same quality-control process to make sure the products reflect the quality standards that our clients can trust, and to identify potential products that might not be up our standards.

This is a list of products we recommend for COVID-19 management. We actively keep it updated as new products are introduced and items come back into stock.

This is a hard time for all of us. However, I offer this reminder. Use this moment to focus in on your mission and core values as a compass to drive your organization forward in this uncertain time.

Questions? Comments? Connect with Michael on LinkedIn or contact him by email.