Member Article

Creative Emporium Online - The Merchandise Veteran Making a Change

With a firm foothold in the merchandise industry, Argon Promo has rebranded to Creative Emporium Online.

Argon Promotions was bought in 2009 by Managing Director, Darren Cohen, to work in line with their existing sister company Creative Emporium. Argon has since remained a Yorkshire based business, mindful of its northern roots, Argon works closely with local suppliers to assist the region’s rapid development.

Led from the front by Business Development Director, Gavin Faulkner, Argon maintained a separate identity to its sister company Creative Emporium throughout its operation. Focusing on driving potential customers towards unique, engaging, merchandise through online marketing with an emphasis on SEO and Pay Per Click campaigns.

Innovation has been key to Argon’s development. It’s onsite production and manufacturing facility has ensured that not only are its clients protected from unwanted third-party intervention but that streamlined operations and efficiency keep Argon ahead of the competition.

We caught up with Gavin Faulkner, to discuss his thoughts behind the rebrand, and more importantly his plans to grow this Leeds based company:

What is Creative Emporium Online?

Creative Emporium Online or (CEO) supply branded merchandise and clothing for both promotional and corporate requirements.

We are ideally suited to service any organisation regardless of size, industry type or location. Working in partnership with some of the UK’s and World’s largest brands dispatching products globally on a daily basis.

The team ethos is of continual improvement in everything we do, the business was built on the foundation that customer satisfaction is key.

What has prompted the rebrand? Why now?

From an aesthetics perspective, the rebranding brings in line our online solution along with our other trading divisions, it’s a fresh look and to be honest the old Argon site was looking a little tired.

I believe that we need to continually evolve as our industry is continually challenged, the road to market is becoming easier for the smaller start up’s to enter the promotional field and also existing businesses to ‘bolt on’ merchandise as an additional service to their existing supply offering. Even though this creates a wider choice for clients to choose a supplier, it is ultimately leading to a price driven marketplace.

Having a prominent site with a very selective range of products ensures we are at the forefront of our industry being able to offer our clients the latest products along with the fundamental items at competitive rates.

It also allows us to now focus our strategic marketing objectives in order to yield more positive results where we can focus specific offers to the right customers thus creating efficiencies and a more target driven approach.

How have your existing clients reacted to the change?

Really positively actually, the main concern was, ‘Will we still have the same team members’? That was nice to hear, it sounds like a cliché but I believe we have become an integral part and even an extension of our customer’s marketing teams.

We are aware that the products are a given, where we add value is in our consultative approach, we are not afraid to challenge and if we don’t feel something is right our customers trust in our judgements.

We also feel the user experience has significantly improved with an overall easier interface combined with clear and concise call to actions.

What puts Creative Emporium Online above the competition?

In all honesty, when I started 20 years ago, there were a handful of truly elite promotional merchandise companies, which I would now classify ourselves amongst them.

As I previously mentioned, the road to market is now becoming increasingly easier for one-man band start-ups to enter the promotional merchandise arena with no previous experience. For me, experience counts for everything, we still need to balance our competitive online offering with an offline account management solution and this is where we excel.

We are brand guardians, we understand the value of our customer’s brand, and a poorly printed product or a cheap import from an un-audited factory can damage a customer’s reputation in minutes, we ensure all our supply chain are able to supply audited reports whenever requested.

We are also only one of only a handful of merchandise companies in the UK with our own in house production and warehousing facilities, ensuring we can meet tight deadlines as these are inevitable.

How does Creative Emporium Online look to expand in the future?

Ultimately it is all about making the procurement of merchandise and clothing effortless. Do you want someone to handle everything…. no problem, we can dedicate someone to specifically manage your account to assist you from the onset, take the brief, respond, visualise your products and manage the whole process. Do you want to be able to order your goods online, upload your own artwork, see a price and order… no problem, this is how we want to evolve the site going forward.

For now, we want to concentrate on offering our customers a one stop solution with a core selected competitively priced product range as well as well as showcasing the latest must have items.

Finally, I think you are only passionate if you believe what you are selling and enjoy who you work with. We wouldn’t do what we do if we didn’t have the drive for what we deliver, maybe it’s just us, we love what we do and ultimately we have fun!

Check out Creative Emporium Online’s brand new website: http://www.creativeemporiumonline.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James R Shaw .