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Compare Business Card Displays First Before Buying

Posted on August 15th, 2007.

Hi Everyone,

“What is the best type of business card dispenser to buy?”.

As it stands, there’s an average of 240 page views per day on this blog, and as a result I get emails each day with questions that are more often then not of the same nature . The #1 question I get, is “Which displays are the best ones to buy?”.

Like any product or service, there is usually pros and cons to everything. For example:

Eating in a nice restaurant : Pro - Quality food and great service   Con - Expensive

Eating at a cheap pizza buffet : Pro - it’s cheap   Con - You fetch your own food, and blend in with everyone else looking like pigs standing around a food trough… only to put a lump of fattening food on your plate.

Buying a Bentley: Pro- Very high quality car    Con - Expensive

Business card displays are no different.

I’ve had people email me with all types of comments, like their displays being knocked over and cracked. One person emailed me telling me how he went to re-stock his display, only to find the store owner had moved it into a corner with zero visibility to the public!

In a nutshell, it comes down to this… do you want wall mounted displays, or a display that sits on a stand. It only takes alittle bit of logic to work out which could be more practical for you once you analysis the facts.  

Forget about how exciting a website looks, how many bells and whistles it has, or how big the displays are… play devils advocate in your research, because it’s your money and reputation on the line!

Lets look at some cons to both type of displays…

Displays on a stand:

YOU MAY NEED TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL $400 - $600 ONTO THE PURCHASE PRICE OF YOU DISPLAYS IF THEY ARE ON A STAND! Did you think about the insurance? Here’s a few reasons why you might like to investigate insurance costs if you buy displays that are free standing (Especially in the USA!).

Can get knocked over and cracked (as experienced by one operator already)

Like candy vending machines, they can be moved by whomever wants to move them… let’s hope it’s not out the door.

Kids like to touch, bang and swing on things… so just imagine for a moment that you have your display located in the waiting room of a doctors surgery (good location by the way), and a mum walks in with two hyperactive kids? Whoops, the display just fell and hit the kid on the head … does the owner of the display have some very extensive insurance in this situation?

The only way to secure the display properly is to have it fastened to the floor (If you want to sleep peacefully at night that is)… to avoid the display being removed.

So that’s the downsides to stands in my opinion, and no doubt there are upsides aswell.

Wall Mounted:

You need to find a vacent position on the wall.

You need to screw into the wall… but a registered handyman can do it in about 10 minutes securely. Same with the display boards on a stand, a handyman could secure it to the floor for you.

Big Displays:

The more advertising spaces you have, the longer it takes to fill with advertisers and start making money (you don’t want to locate them half full).

The advertisers message gets watered down, which means less chance of their cards getting taken…which then decreases the chance of them re-newing their advertising contract with you.

Bigger isn’t always as good as it looks (I must admit there is more revenue potential). Let me ask you this … if you were a business owner looking to pay to advertise in a display, would you prefer to be in a display with alot of other advertisers around you in the same display, or less? If you owned a store that someone wanted to locate a display in, would you prefer a big display in your store on the floor, or a smaller compact display that’s up on the wall and out of the way?

So that’s my take, and you can work out the pro’s for each of the above yourself. As you can see, I prefer wall mounted displays, but that’s only my opinion. I just see to many potential problems with displays on a stand, and I don’t like dealing with problems if I can avoid it to begin with! Some people will get by with no problems, while others won’t. You just need to decide the risk factor for yourself.

So sit back, and take the emotion out of your purchase and use simple logic… that’s what successful people do before making any business decisions. People who buy on emotion usually are just getting sucked in (that goes for anything). It’s kind of like those paid television advertisements …. how they show a nice body jogging down the beach because of this fantastic new excercise machine they’re advertising? Then the person pulls out their credit card and buys it on emotion … only to find it never gets used. The best thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and see it from their side of the table, because their the ones who are going to line your pocket.

The above comments are what I see with my set of eyes, but you may see totally different, neither you or I are right or wrong. Me, well I don’t take risks in business that are obvious to me to begin with … no matter what the price difference is.

Some of you are no doubt thinking “Yeh, but you sell wall mounted displays”, and you’re correct. I sell wall mounted displays for good reason… and that’s precisely why i’ve managed to stay around this business for years…i’m selective in any business I do, and especially the product i’m selling. I did actually consider buying bigger displays on stands to begin with, but after getting feedback from business owners during my research before buying, I just didn’t get the response I was hoping for.

I’ll sign off now on this post, and I hope the above helps you in one way or another. Feel free to comment.

PS - Many display operators take this option first  before investing large sums of money into purchasing displays.

Dean

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