I am sure that the majority of households get confused by exactly what goes in which bin! I am also sure that the majority of households no longer have the leaflet that was sent out and maybe some never opened it. This is likely to happen because the leaflet cannot be displayed; it is not interesting or interactive and will therefore stand a very slim chance of being kept.

For public information products holding this valuable information it needs to be completely fuss free and it needs to be simple. Whitney Woods now has a great alternative for National Governments, local authorities and county councils that will make recycling within the households and workplaces a breeze.

Take a look at our Recycling Information Disks. These are made completely with the user in mind for everyone who may struggle to see or read the ‘what goes where wheel’ makes it much easier to understand. We can easily supply these wheels with a little chain so it can be hung in a convenient place extending the life of the information and making sure your recycling is right every time. To see where your litter goes just turn the wheel and it will tell you what colour bin including a picture; this also makes it more memorable for the customer. The turning mechanism makes it interactive for the customer holding their attention and even gaining interest in what the card is showing. The card also has plenty of space to print useful numbers and addresses to make the process even smoother.

This product is a win win situation for all. Make life simple by introducing this product to improve communication with the public and we can even mail them out for you, no fuss, no confusion bring your information leaflets in to the future.

As our daily blog seems to focus almost entirely on advertising and marketing subjects it is easy to overlook the day to day work activities that led Whitney Woods to become a leading manufacturer of pop-ups and interactive promotional products.

When the company was formed in 1992 the business was made up of two divisions. One was a mailing house and the other was print finishing by hand and both are still fully functional operations today. It was the dextrous skills of our hand-finishing team that led to the assembly of pop-ups and interactive products. The same team also provides an eyeletting service to the print industry and this year we expect to assemble millions of wheel charts not only for our marketing customers but also for the print industry.

Our mailing house services are used by many local companies as well as by a large number of our marketing customers who commission us to send out the promotional mailers that we have made for them. Our direct mail website is currently undergoing a redesign and will be sporting a brand new look in a couple of weeks time. The current site looks very dated and tired and needs to be freshened up to be more in line with our popupmailers and whitneywoods websites. Other sites also need to be brought up to date so our new web designer, Kate Pollitt at Kreate Graphics is going to be busy!

The amount of business that we receive for our hand finishing business has dwindled over the years, particularly with the UK’s oversubscribed print industry having experienced a very hard time in the recession. Printers have been running below full capacity for some time now and so they have tended to do whatever they can in-house rather than sub-contractiong their work to outfits such as ours.

Our eyeletting services division has fared better. The recession has killed off some of the competition in the eyeletting services market and we have picked up new business as a result of the unfortunate circumstances of others.

In the quest to gain new customers through creative direct mail it is possible to over-egg the pudding by trying to be too clever. There are certain attributes that are very desirable in a mail shot but it is easy to go too far in trying to achieve certain goals. For example, customer interaction is a terrific commodity in B2B direct marketing but if it is not immediately obvious how the interaction works then spontaneity goes out of the window and the opportunity can be lost. Marketing professionals are well advised to keep things simple but nonetheless entertaining.

In order to turn an information sheet into a simple, interactive information tool with an obvious interaction, designers need to look no further than towards a simple stationery eyelet as a tool to provide many answers. This point is best illustrated if we take a look at circular information charts.

Circular Information Discs are Popular Promotional Tools

The main problem with this type of product is that no-one knows what they are called - wheel charts, information discs, calculators, roundels and spinners are just a few of the more common names. Whatever you may call them doesn’t alter the basic fact that they are very popular information tools that are used to promote a myriad of products. They are usually made up of either two or three discs custom printed in full colour and fastened at the centre with a metal eyelet. The eyelet allows the discs to turn around the central point in order to locate certain items of information. The top disc usually has a window or aperture through which it is easy to read information. This info can be the answer to a question, technical data or a list of products for example. Whatever it is, the reader has to interact with the disc in order to read it and so the disc becomes a good product for B2B direct marketing.

Another product that has promotional uses and that is similar to the information discs described above is a product that is familiar in the UK and many parts of Europe and that is a parking disc. In the UK in particular, such products are often used as promotion items produced on behalf of the auto industry and targeted at the motorist.

The simple metal eyelet is also at the heart of other promotional items. Take, for example, a set of information cards.

Fan-like Display Created by Eyelet Fastener

Swatch cards, also known as fan cards and information cards, are printed, die-cut, collated and fastened in one corner using a metal eyelet so that they open like a hand-held ladies fan. Such cards come in a variety of shapes and in sizes, usually from credit card size to A5 and are generally printed in full colour on 300gsm art board or a similar substrate.

There are other ways to use metal eyelets in the creation of movement and one example is to use two eyelets to present a motion similar to that produced by a fly wheel or a camshaft. The product is usually presented as a sleeve with the mechanics on the inside. A wheel at the side of the sleeve is fastened at the centre and is turned in an even, circular motion by the user. Within the sleeve, a die-cut piece is connected to the wheel by a long shaft which is eyeletted to the wheel in an off-centre position. When the wheel is turned, the shaft moves up and down with it but as the die-cut piece is held within a slot, the movement is somewhat irregular - like a “bobbing” motion. With the use of creative graphics, the die-cut piece can be made to look like a duck or a boat bobbing along in water.

As hand finishers, Whitney Woods has been supplying print finishing, hand finishing and eyeletting services to the print industry since 1992 making it one of the longest established specialist hand finishers in the UK. We have a reputation for being very thorough and for producing high quality hand finishing services. We have the capacity to handle high volume eyeletting jobs though we are equally happy to handle small quantities. Our speciality in the eyeletting arena is handling eyeletted discs, information discs, wheel charts and parking discs though we also handle tags and swatches and unusual eyeletting jobs such as using eyeletting as a binding tool.

 There are many print finishing jobs which still have to be done by hand and we handle most of them. Hand finishing jobs such as hand folding, hand collating, hand gluing and hand inserting are all covered at some length on our hand finishing website. We pride ourselves in the variety and quality of print finishing services that we offer. We are not frightened to ask questions or to raise doubts over the specification of any job. If we can foresee any problems we will discuss them with you rather than to carry on regardless. Whilst some printers have found this to be a pain, they are very grateful when they see that a reprint has been averted!

 When you ask for a quote for a hand finishing or eyeletting job we send you a very precise description of what will happen. The same applies should you need a price for our mailing house or marketing services. The comprehensive detail on the quote cuts out any misunderstandings and does not allow for assumptions. Our quote is typical of the standard of hand finishing work that you can expect from us – very thorough with attention to detail. The same can be said of quotes for eyeletting where we discuss hole sizes, the act of clearing waste from holes and the job of stripping out die-cut pieces from a sheet. The quote will be delivered by email or by fax and will be done within a couple of hours of placing the request.

We have an opportunity for you to add our “back to basics” services to your portfolio. We offer traditional hand finishing and eyeletting services. The only machines that we have in our factory are paper drills and hand-operated eyeletting machines. In fact, eyeletting is probably our biggest niche market with eyeletted discs being our forte. We do millions of them each year; we handle high-volume orders and we can do it quickly. We are known by printers throughout the length and breadth of the UK as a highly reliable company that produces both quality hand work and quality eyeletting services.

 However, there is a catch. Unlike many other hand finishers and eyeletting companies we don’t work for nothing and we refuse to become busy fools. Our work is charged out at a fair price, we do it right and we do it on time. We assess each job at the quoting stage and point out any pitfalls before they happen. If we can’t do it, we won’t take the job on. If we can’t get the price that we want, we don’t take it on.

 In times like these, printers and finishers in the industry come and go. Phoenix companies spring up overnight only to fail again with alarming regularity. It may be comforting for you to know that we have been in business since 1992 and over 75% of our workforce has been with us for over 10 years. We believe that we have a good balance of sound business practices and proactive marketing policies that have allowed us to grow and prosper whilst others have fallen by the wayside. If you feel like you could help to build on that solid base then please get in touch. You can see details of our company on our hand finishing website and you will also find contact details there, too.