Melanie Krcilek: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Melanie Krcilek with eLead Promo, one of the account managers who works with the San Juan Regional Medical Center.

Josh Cherry: And I'm Josh Cherry. I'm also an Account Manager supporting the San Juan team. Together, we help bring branded merchandise and apparel to life, from event giveaways, recognition programs, custom projects, and so much more.

Melanie Krcilek: We're really excited to be here today and have the opportunity to walk everyone through the San Juan Regional Medical Center brand store, explain some features that you may not know about, and share a few tips to help make ordering easier.

Josh Cherry: And if you stick with us until the end, we do have a little thank you gift for all of our listeners. It'll be a special promo code that you can use on the brand store for a discount on a future purchase. So, definitely stick around.

Melanie Krcilek: Awesome. So, Josh, let's start with the brand store itself. A question that you may have is what is it? What does it entail? The site is going to be sanjuanregional.store, and this is a site that you can use for any of your branded merchandise needs. It's kind of a central location for employees to shop.

Everything on there has been approved by internal branding, and that's always a great jumping off point for any projects. Easy, convenient, available all the time. Anywhere you can access the internet, you can hop on there.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, definitely a great central location for everyone to use. A few product categories that you might find on the Brand Store include the San Juan Regional Medical Center apparel, San Juan Health Partners apparel, hats and accessories, office items, event merchandise, home and lifestyle products, tech, personal care, and wellness products. There's really something for just about everyone, whether you're shopping for work, gifts, or everyday use.

Melanie Krcilek: That sounds great, Josh. I do want to punch a few points about the brand store. One thing that's great is the flexibility that it offers. Most apparel pieces can be ordered one at a time, so you don't have to do bulk orders if you just need a single jacket or a single hat for something, that would be the place to go for that. Many backpacks and bags can also be purchased individually, and we work with trusted vendors and decorating shops to ensure that your logo looks great and you can wear it with pride.

Another category we have on the site is the hard goods. A lot of those you will notice you can't order single pieces. Of course, something like a pen, it's not cost-effective to manufacture a single piece pen. So, that's why you will see those minimum order quantities, and what you see will reflect options and price breaks available.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, that's right, Melanie. Lots of great options on there. Lots of ways to utilize what you'd like to order. We'd also like to touch a little bit on the payment options, because I'm sure everyone's curious about that as well.

Two payment options that are primary on the store are personal or company credit card. However, if you're ordering more than 25 pieces of apparel, or let's say you're purchasing some hard goods that meet the minimum order quantity, you can also charge that purchase directly to your department using your department code or activity code. That definitely allows you a lot of flexibility if you're trying to order bulk for your department or something for a large event. So that way, you can be invoiced after the order is complete.

Melanie Krcilek: Yeah, it's good that that option is there, and I think, yeah, a lot of people might not know about it or be familiar with kind of how to charge to a cost center if it's something like you mentioned, a departmental purpose.

Josh Cherry: Absolutely. And we are always available to help walk anyone through. What we seem to frequently get are the questions of, "Is this purchase allowed for a department charge?" Or, "Do I have to use a personal credit card?" Again, us being your dedicated account managers, we're happy to help with that. And another great feature of our brand store is the ability to also use gift codes or user codes. So Melanie, you want to touch base a little bit on what gift codes can do?

Melanie Krcilek: For sure. So, gift codes kind of, I think, the easiest way to think about it is similar to a traditional gift card. We have a lot of flexibility and options for gift codes, which does make them a great choice for employee recognition, rewards, appreciation, department incentives, anything like that where you want to acknowledge someone, but you may not want to choose what you're giving to them and allow them that choice a little bit more.

So, gift codes can be purchased in any dollar amount, in any quantity. They never expire. They are not assigned to an individual, and they are also non-refundable.

Josh Cherry: Yeah. And another great feature that we have are user codes. Now, these act a little bit different than gift codes. They are practical and unique in their own way as well because these codes are assigned directly to one employee. And then, those funds live inside their brand store account. After an employee receives a user code, they will receive an email notification letting them know that this code has been activated on their account, and then those funds can be automatically applied during checkout.

For example, these work really well if you want to provide every employee with a clothing allowance or an anniversary gift. And this allows them to choose exactly what they want and input their information themselves, without you having to do all that heavy lifting of figuring out what everybody might need or all of their shipping information. There's definitely more flexibility and ease than selecting the same gift and trying to take all that legwork on yourself.

Melanie Krcilek: Yeah. And I know when I was coming on board and learning the difference between the two, just the way that they come in was something that differentiates them. So as Josh mentioned, the difference between gift codes and user codes, one difference between them is that user codes will come in an automated email to the recipient directly with their email that's tied to the brand store. A gift code we would process on a spreadsheet sent to you as the purchaser, and then you would distribute those out.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, that's right, Melanie. And I feel like we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't touch on one specific example where user codes really help out. Something that we really like to see is if a department head manager has a team and none of them are really familiar with the brand store, by giving them a user code, they receive an email, their account is actually automatically created.

It's great to have that link that sends them right to the store. They feel the flexibility of having some funds to automatically use and check out. So really, it's a great way to get everybody introduced to their brand new store and all of the great branded apparel and merchandise that we have available.

Melanie Krcilek: Absolutely. And I know those can also come in handy for some events throughout the year. I know we've done stuff for Pharmacy Week before, Nurses Week, Doctors Week, all of those things. I feel like that's a great thing to keep in mind. And as far as ordering, either one can be ordered directly through us as account managers.

You kinda just send us the details, and we're often able to turn that around same day for you. I know we've talked about the brand store, kind of the items we always have available there, as well as gift codes, but sometimes a project has scope outside of that, and we'll need something more specific or more unique

Josh Cherry: Yeah, that's right, Melanie. This is where we really excel as your dedicated brand managers. We can help curate branded merchandise for conferences, employee appreciation, community events, recruiting, holiday gifts, large apparel programs. I mean, really, the options are endless and there's so many opportunities out there that we would really like to help give you all the tools that you need to really get your brand out there into your market

Melanie Krcilek: Yeah, and we're happy to cater to any specific asks you may have. I know during the summer there's a lot of fairs and community events, things of that nature. Happy to theme presentations and options toward whatever you're working on, and that's usually fun for us as well. The important details we will need when you're reaching out with a project to keep in mind would be the event details, especially the timeline, any budget associated, the product ideas you may have, and then that's usually enough for us to build off of.

we can take it from there, source some options for your review, and we are there every step of the way from the product ideation to holding that final product in your hands.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, that's right. Our job is to narrow down those options, and we want to present the products that fit your goals and budget so that you're not spending hours searching through thousands of promotional products. Because truth be told, it's out there. There are countless options for you to explore, but it is definitely our job and our expertise to help hone in on what we think will help create your event and your brand to be as successful as possible.

Melanie Krcilek: there are tons of options. Waiting through those can just be really time-consuming, and everybody likes to online window shop. But sometimes, you need a more direct path forward.

Josh Cherry: Absolutely. We have plenty of time for that on our end, so we really enjoy bringing that ideation all the way to fruition and getting that product in your hands. And along with that, our role goes far beyond simply taking orders, and this is where we'd like to touch a little bit base about ourselves and, as an account manager, how we like to help

Melanie Krcilek: Sure, yeah. I know I have now been in the promotional product industry for about nine years. I think, Josh, you also have several years under your belt as well?

Josh Cherry: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, coming up on 10 years actually with the industry, and it's ever-changing as you know, Melanie. Like every year we're attending a new conference. We're having tons of vendor meetings all year long, seeing what the latest and greatest products are. And I think that's where our expertise really shines

Melanie Krcilek: I would agree. There's also a thing we're seeing now is a lot of retail products coming into the promo side. So if you ever see something while you're out in the world, get something as a gift and think, "I wonder if we could use this for this project," definitely no ask is too crazy.

We're there to help with brainstorming, sourcing, recommendations, as well as if you want to try something different, we have alternate decoration methods, shipping logistics. All of those things are under our scope, and we're happy to put our expertise toward any project that you have for us.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, absolutely. and you hit it right there when you said like there really is no idea that's too crazy. I mean, we have been introduced to so many requests, so many things that in your mind you might think there's no possible way we could really make this work. But truth be told, that's where our avenues really come into play and all of our connections.

There's always a way, there's always some kind of opportunity out there that'll lend to your event, to your needs, and we really want to help make that come alive. So again, never any idea that we can't handle or at least try to sculpt it into what the best plan and outreach would be for you.

Our goal is to make the entire process as easy as possible from that very first idea all the way to having quality products in your hands

Melanie Krcilek: I think a couple other things we should mention as far as ordering goes is rush orders. We're very familiar with how time can sometimes just get away from us. Deadlines can come up upon us pretty quickly. You think that maybe something is lined up and then it doesn't end up being lined up. If you're ever in that situation and you need product in a rush, that's something we can also help out with. We have a lot of options for rush production, depending on your needs. But definitely, again, don't hesitate to ask.

Josh Cherry: That's right. Along with that, we also have the capabilities of some kitting services. We can help build custom kits by combining multiple products together that we've maybe presented to you. It doesn't necessarily all have to be from the same facility, same factory. Some examples would be new hire welcome kits, employee appreciation gifts. Maybe you have a conference coming up and you'd like to give everybody an attendee gift that's prepackaged in a tote or a box, holiday gifts. Those are always huge. We can even drop ship individual kits directly to your team or to your recipients, and that helps make the distribution incredibly easy for you. We also have a lot of platforms that make it easy for us to help collect your shipping addresses, help collect the selections. Maybe you have a T-shirt or a jacket, but you don't know the best way for someone to input their size or select the color option that you've presented. There's a lot of avenues of that as well for us to help take that on.

Melanie Krcilek: And I know we've been able to do a lot of really fun projects with stuff like that, give that personalized and direct touch. Another great resource that we want to make sure we mention today is our eLead Promo store and our online database of products. So, everything that's available on your brand store, we've put on there based on the needs.

But that's definitely not representative of everything that we can possibly offer. So if you ever want to browse through and just generate some ideas, look at some different things, our store is going to be shop.eleadpromo, E-L-E-A-D-P-R-O-M-O.com. And I think that's it. Anything else, Josh, that you can think of?

Josh Cherry: If I can just touch on one thing that I think you and I should really put out there is production timelines and in-hand dates are important. So, you touched on a little bit about us having enough time for maybe a potential rush project, but I think everyone always asks us this, and it's helpful that we share: What does a typical turnaround time look like for a custom order, for an apparel order? And the answer to that is it varies. It varies on the kind of product you're ordering and how much of that you are ordering, what kind of decoration method.

But in general, we like to always leave three to four weeks as such a great safe zone. More time, of course, is always going to be beneficial for you. You don't want to rush. You don't want to see those rush fees. You don't want to see rush shipping fees. So we just like to express that having as much time to plan and get your idea flowing is the best way to set yourself up for success.

We are unfortunately not a big box business where you'll get next-day deliveries or anything like that. We can try our best to pull it off if possible. But to really succeed for yourself and your business, letting us have plenty of time to get your idea out there, that's very important. So, I just wanted to touch a little bit on that as well.

Melanie Krcilek: Yeah, definitely. I feel like especially during the summer, it seems like shipping can be really crazy if there's severe weather or anything of that nature. So, always having a little extra padding is going to be beneficial for everyone, I think.

Josh Cherry: Yeah, absolutely. I think we hit it well on all of those tips that we definitely like to share with everybody that's listening.

Melanie Krcilek: And we hope that today's conversation helped give you some more insight into your brand store and understand everything that's available through us as your account managers.

Josh Cherry: That's right. Whether you're shopping for yourself, maybe you're ordering for your department, planning an event, maybe you're recognizing employees, maybe you're looking for something completely custom, we are here to help, and we would like you to reach out at any time so that we can really make your idea shine.

Melanie Krcilek: Please don't hesitate to reach out to us, whether that's with a project or even just to say hello. We're happy to work with you guys. We appreciate the partnership, and we're here for whatever we can do for you.

Josh Cherry: That's right. And as promised, here is your thank you for listening all the way through. On the San Juan brand store during checkout, you can enter the code BRANDSTORE15 in all caps and no spaces. Again, that's BRANDSTORE15. This is an exclusive promo code that can be used on the store for a one-time $15 discount on your next purchase. It will be live for 30 days following the release of this podcast, and it's just our way of saying thanks for spending a few minutes with us today. Make sure you hurry because it's only going to be active, as you know, for a limited time. And just thank you all so much. It was a pleasure being here with you. And we're really happy to get to work with you on your ideas in the future. Right, Melanie?

Melanie Krcilek: Yes, absolutely. Thank you again for listening. We look forward to working with you. Thanks, Josh, for the conversation. Thanks, San Juan Regional Medical Center, for this opportunity. And happy shopping!