FEBRUARY 2022 UPDATE
New Services, Products, and Price Updates ✅
Hope you are all back into the swing of things ready for the busy spring season of selling events – Valentine’s Day , Mother’s Day, and then Easter all come up thick and fast and then the biggest of all in the personalisation world – Father’s Day follows on their heels… we’ll be bringing you more inspiration for these in due course…
New services, products, and (sorry!) prices…
NEW! Custom / bespoke, Insert, variable shape service
We wanted to to let you know we are relaunching our Custom/Bespoke service for cutting items not listed on the site already (which we suspended throughout lockdown whilst we were too busy keeping up with standard items!). We have revamped the way the service works (its always been incredibly popular as we are the only company machining custom metal sub items as far as we know, but it it is a complex process so we have to have a set process so it is profitable for us and you) We now offer the service split it into 3 order items:
The first 2 require you to pay a set up fee and we will then add the items to the site to order, the latter you can order directly with any normal order, with no set up fee. If you are after any custom machined items please follow the links to see how we now offer them (we’ll email some more info in our next full newsletter).
NEW! Products
Secondly we are working on lots of fab new products! By the next newsletter we should have some new Easter products including Bunny, chick and sheep easter egg holders, some Fathers day shapes – a Hammer and a ‘Lego’ style brick, Bees and beehives and most importantly new crowns, crosses, gemstone and fleur de lis shapes well in time for the Queens 70th Jubilee celebrations in June (many of these in direct response to customer requests! – sneak peek in the photos above!)
We will also soon be offering an elegant range of Engraved sublimation plaques and an extensive range of inexpensive MDF backs for our smaller items like coasters, pendants, keyrings, badges and fridge magnets! Phew! Loads to look forward to…
Finally we are adding a new section to help out with the news below – we are calling them our Value items and packs. We will be choosing or creating new sizes in our most popular ranges: Aluminium sheet, Coasters, Bookmarks, Keyrings and the first to receive the treatment – Fridge magnets. These value sizes will be chosen so we can be as efficient as possible in cutting and packaging them so we will be able to offer them at the absolute lowest prices we can and in pack sizes to minimise packaging waste and time and pass these savings to you. So our first value pack … drum roll please… will be our 63mm Square fridge magnet in Value pack of 100, at a 22% saving over our standard bulk rate at 100 – meaning they are only just over 24p each!! Pure value! Please bookmark our New Products Page and keep an eye on it in the next couple of weeks…
NEW! Prices
Unfortunately the last news in this update is the imminent price increase we have no choice but to impose. As normal we aim to be as transparent as possible with this and explain why. We had been warned last year that our metal was to have an unprecedented price rise due to the same reasons many other raw materials are suffering from:
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increased container/shipping costs
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supply and demand issues
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general global price rises
with the additional pressure that sublimation metal has not increase in price more then around 10% in the last 10 years , so we were due an increase anyway … we had thought we were getting a 20% increase, but we have now been informed it is to be a whopping 40%. Coupled with other increases:
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MDF – 100%,
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Many of our other supplier increases at 20%+
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Plastic and cardboard packaging 50%,
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Wage increases from April 5% min,
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Energy 20% and rising…
We buy our metal and 90% of our ancillary items – jewellery settings and accessories, MDF backs, tins, clock mechs, stands, coaster bumps, packaging – the plastic boxes we send our bulk and kits out in and cardboard, etc etc from UK suppliers wherever possible – we do this for 3 reasons:
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It means we are rarely out of stock of items
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We have an extra layer of security for quality control – if we have problems with items we are generally looked after by our UK suppliers and they sort issues quickly and mostly painlessly – leaving us to concentrate on innovation and service – creating new exclusive products, responding to customer design request and supplying you as quickly and efficiently as possible
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We want to support UK industry and jobs as much as possible, and as such are going to add a ‘Made in Yorkshire’ badge to our site and encourage as many of you as possible to support us and use “Made in the UK’ marketing to your customers.
All this allow us to stand out against most other sublimation suppliers in the UK, as most are box shifters, not manufacturers, buying from the far east and often waiting on a ‘slow boat’ from China. This approach gives you one of the the best supply service and backup in the industry – we offer:
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a no quibble 100% satisfaction guarantee,
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send out regular support newsletters,
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add free samples to orders
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constantly add innovative new items (many as direct responses to customer requests)
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most items manufactured in ‘sunny’ Yorkshire (😂)
We have managed to keep the increase down by working hard over the last 2 years through the lockdown on increasing our efficiency as much as possible, updating systems and the way we work and re-investing our increased turnover/profit in new equipment and space. We were hoping to move into a new premises last year to accommodate our growing workforce (there are now 15 of us trying to keep up with your demand lol) stock holding and machinery – this proved impossible in the short term as there are just no units available big enough in the local vicinity (we only wanted to be up to 10 mins from where we are at present) so we have made the decision to invest in our own property for the time being- so far having spent:
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£100,000 on extending out buildings and creating offices and adding containers and cabins for storage
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with a further £20,000 in process
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£20,000 on new machinery to help us improve processes in general cutting,
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£10,000 on machine cutting
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new lasers totalling £60,000:
1 arrived last week for improved MDF cutting -
1 due soon, that will hopefully allow as to add some more new products and sell into to some new markets 🙂
All this investment means we can be competitive but we cant be the cheapest on all items and still:
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support our staff (who we pay more than the minimum wage)
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keep to our high standards of quality checking (we test print our metal regularly) order checking
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quality packaging of items (we employ one member of staff just to pack your orders as well as possible – in extra layers or boxes etc)
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telephone and email support develop new and innovative products
We have number crunched as much as possible and are going to need to increase our prices across the site by 15% from the March 1st. 🙁
So having given you fair warning, please use the next 2 weeks to stock up where possible before our price increase kicks in.
Important Dates:
- Valentine’s Day – February 14th
- Mother’s Day – March 27th
January/February Free Gift
For January and February’s free gift you will receive a rectangle of 0.5mm white metal, a magnet square, and a dry wipe pen topped with an eraser, or any of our dry wipe shapes! You can use them as small ‘to do’ lists, shopping lists, or even as notepads to leave notes for everyone to read!
We hope this will demonstrate the dry wipe capabilities of our metal, allowing you to sample our pens for projects highlighted in this Newsletter…
January/February Special Offer
The Special Offer for January and February is an extra 10% off our (already heavily discounted!) Dry Wipe Bumper Collection! This pack has been UPDATED to include a huge selection of shapes, and is fantastic for anyone wanting to sample our range of dry wipe themed items.
With all sorts of shapes and add ons, this pack is bound to get your creativity flowing… Offer ends Feb 28th 2022!
New Products
- New! Updated Dry Wipe Shapes
- New! Sheep
- New! Bunny
- New! Rabbit Paw Print
- New! Chick
- Updated! Dry Wipe Bumper Collection
- Updated! Dry Wipe Starter Pack
Seasonal/Marketing Ideas
Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and many people will be on the lookout for the perfect gift for their loved ones!
Once again, our range of gift sets is always a great place to start, and we have plans to keep adding to this range this year. So far we have sets that cater to a range of interests – from jewellery and keyrings, to drink sets and a sporty golf set!
Jewellery always makes a fantastic gift, and we have a great selection of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and cufflinks sure to peak anyone’s interest!
Check out our popular Luxury Pandora Style Bracelet Gift Setfor a beautiful piece with lots of choices for personalisation. Alternatively, have a look at our collection of Charms, Beads, and Pendants with sublimation inserts to purchase individual items to build into sets yourself.
Don’t forget about Easter! We have a brilliant Easter Hunt Setthat can be used year after year to organise fun egg hunts for all ages! We also have an Easter Egg/Flower Basket , beautiful Easter wreath and some NEW Easter Shapes that are perfect for the occasion – Sheep, Bunny, Chick, and Rabbit Paw Print!!
Hopefully we’ve given you plenty of ideas to help you fill your baskets and stock rooms as much as possible … we look forward to your orders keeping us busy through to our next newsletter in March!
Kind Regards,
Nicci, Carl, Claire, Sam, Emily, Rachel, Louise, Caroline, Tina, Jodie, Nigel, Brandon, Rob, Sally, Bill, Petal the Doberman, Trixie the Jack Russell, & Donder and Blitzen the Sprocker Siblings – the Subli Metals team!
