Thanks Steve,
I appreciate all your support. However...I must admit that I would be curious to see the mug that Don Alm had sent to your friend from Georgia back in the late 90's to early 2000's. We had 2 full time reps in GA at that time and I'd be curious to see if it was one of our mugs we produced. I would also be curious to see one of these 3 full color cup jobs that Don has produced in last few weeks that he was talking about in his post. I believe he said he was on his 3rd order. When he called me 2 weeks ago acting like he wanted to be a part of our program, he was acting very naive to the whole concept.
Just tons of questions and eventually told me he was too busy with other things to mess with mugs.
His post on this sight was practically verbatum of what we told him about how set up our contractors with the display boxes and table cards to drum up leads.
I have no problem with competition unless they are about ruin the whole concept and area by using an inferior product that can ultimately seriously burn or scald a restaurant patron when the handle simply falls off one day while they are drinking from the mug, or someone cuts their lips on a sharp edge on the rim because the mugs chip very easily and are not vitrified restaurant quality. I do have some legit competition out there that use a safe, quality product. We don't mind any of them, they don't steal our sales material, or pretend to have come up with the concept, and they don't short the restaurant on the number of mugs they need and the best part is that their ad rates are more than double what we charge, so it's not hard to get customers to advertise with us verses them. The point is that the restaurants don't get a bad taste in their mouth to the whole concept if a quality product is used. Most ASI distributors don't carry any Commercial grade mugs. You have to import them or buy from a restaurant supplier and then find someone with experience and knowledge in high temp ceramic inks.
On another note, I checked out your sight and I like what you are doing.
I wish you the best of luck in your future ventures!