Founded in 1999, Custom Gift, Inc. is a privately held Texas Corporation.  Our goal is to ensure your complete satisfaction on each and every order.  You may contact us at anytime via our web site, e-mail, or by phone toll free at 1+800 436-2266.  Our telephone operators are available to take your message twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Distribution and logistics of custom printed promotional products is our specialty.  You can use these products as employee awards for your business, customer appreciation gifts, gifts for seminars, holidays and special occasions, or as convention gifts and trade-show giveaways.  Custom Gift provides promotional products to hundreds of business customers throughout the United States and to several international countries, including Australia, Canada, Great Britain, India, Italy, and Mexico.    

Our guarantee is simple.  We will not be undersold.   If at anytime you find a published purchase price on an identical item from any other promotional products distributor, we will beat it, guaranteed.  We can offer this guarantee due to several factors.  Our business model and state-of-the-art just-in-time inventory process allows us to maintain the lowest possible margins, and these savings are passed along to you with the lowest available price.  We have over 80,000 products available on-line, and through industry associations and other business agreements we have access to over 650,000 products from over 3,000 different manufacturers, importers and suppliers.  If you don't see what you need on our site, just ask us.  We can very likely source it or have it made.  Put very simply, with Custom Gift you get more choices, and lower prices, guaranteed!

Our experienced, professional staff can usually research and return your call within hours, if not minutes, seven days a week.   Custom Gift personnel have extensive experience finding the right product, at the right time, for the right price.   Depending on the product and quantity you need, most orders can be custom printed with your name and/or logo and shipped within 1-2 weeks.   Rush orders are fully expected and we can usually work within your schedule to accommodate shorter intervals. 

BILLING:

For your convenience we accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express.  We also accept business and personal checks, cashiers checks, money orders and electronic checks.   Checks will add an additional 2-3 business to your order after receipt.   We do require first time customers to pay for orders in advance.   Repeat customers may pay 50% when the order is placed and 50% upon order fulfillment (shipment).  Custom printed inventoried items must be purchased when imprinted.
 

We will help you to keep this simple.

You may e-mail your camera ready artwork to us at artwork@customgift.net.   It is often best to send your artwork and imprint requirements to us early in the process.  This will allow us to determine if the format and resolution are sufficient for a clean, crisp imprint.   If not, we can work with you and various third parties to reformat your artwork. 

If artwork is not available in a "soft copy" format that can be e-mailed, most printers will also accept "Camera Ready Hardcopy."  As the name implies, this is a clear, crisp printed black and white of the image, 600dpi or better.  If the image has more than one color, then the hard copy must be color separated.

Custom Gift can use internal and external resources to convert your artwork into the camera ready format required.   If external resources are required, we can often have your artwork reformatted with a one business day turnaround for $59.95, or two days for $49.95.

Although this does increase the costs of the order somewhat, most printers will require your artwork in Vector format in order to provide a custom imprint.  

What is Vector Art?

Vector art is required by most printers to reproduce a clean, crisp image suitable for screen printing, hot stamping, pad printing or embroidery.   Technically, Vector art uses a mathematical formula (geometrically perfect), which can be resized or reshaped without diminishing its sharpness or smoothness.   Common applications include:  ai, eps, cmx, cdr, dxf, wmf/emf.   In general, the higher the resolution (dpi), the better.

Many common types of art do not usually provide the type of image that can be used for custom imprints.  These types of art are "Raster" art, whereby the image is actually a picture that attempts to replicate each pixel.  Raster art does not reproduce a good image for imprints.   These artwork formats that usually do not work well include: jpg, gif, and bmp.

In summary, Vector art is good, Raster art is bad when it comes to imprints.   If you can e-mail your artwork to us early in the process, we will share it with the actual printer to confirm it can be reproduced.  

Most prices on our web site include a single color, single location imprint.  The printing set-up charge will vary by product and printer, however it will usually range from $40-$65 per color, per location.  Each separate color requires a separate imprint, so there is often a separate "run charge" per item.   Of course, any set-up fees, artwork re-format charges or additional run charges will be itemized in your quote.

For some common technical terms or imprint types used in the industry, please see below.

Bitmap (or "raster")

Electronic representation of a page, indicating the position of every position spot (zero or one). A graphic image or picture portrayed in pixel. Such as jpgs, gifs, eps, tiffs, picts, psd, bmp, etc�

Any drawing, photos, illustration or lettering suitable for photographic reproduction.

Separation of multicolored original art by camera or laser-scan techniques to produce individual separated colors. There are four common separatons: yellow, magenta, cyan and black.

Indicators on artwork to show where an illustration is to be cut or sized.

Style of lettering or design of a company used as a trademark to identify itself.

Color scale used to precisely match colors for printing. Each hue has a coded number indicating instructions for mixing inks to achieve that hue. Available for spot colors and process colors in coated and uncoated colors.

Color or black and white artwork printed on paper before printing on actual product(s).

Cross-hair marks applied to negatives, artwork, photographs or mechanicals to ensure precise register on the final product.

A mathematical defined object (geometrically perfect). Can be resized or reshaped without diminishing its sharpness or smoothness. Found in ai, eps, cmx, cdr, dxf,wmf/emf

Depression of an image into a material such as paper, leather or suede, so the image sits below the product surface.

Raising of an image on a product, accomplished by pressing the material between concave and convex dies.

Process in which a metal plate or die is heated and then pressed against foil into a surace, causing the pigments of the foil to transfer to the surface. Also called hot-stamping. Mostly used for business cards and stationary.

Printing process that creates color productions by overprinting screens that individually print magentas, yellows, cyans and blacks of variable specified intensities. This method of printing is used for pictures and artwork with gradient.

Imprinting method by which art or lettering is cut into a material by a laser beam that vaporizes the portion exposed through openings in a template.

Imprinting method in which the image is transferred to the printed surface by ink squeegeed through a stenciled screen stretched over a frame. Screens are treated with a light-sensitive emulsion, then film positives are put in contact with the screens and exposed to light. The light hardens the emulsion not covered by the film, leaving a soft area on the screen for the squeegee to force ink through. Also called silkscreening. This method is only use for spot colors.

Sublimation

Dye transfer process where the image consists of a colored dye permanently embedded into the material surface of pores. Used to imprint messages, graphics and photographs on a variety of items, primarily mousepads, mugs, T-shirts, caps and trophy medals.