Flash memory, quality is everything...

Most businesses want to cut costs at every opportunity and find better deals on required products. However, businesses should be aware that if they buy too cheaply, they run the risk of products failing and their reputation being at stake. In my experience this is even more apparent with USB sticks than any other media storage device.

USB keys and flash drives are a quick, simple and versatile storage device and our USB duplication service now makes them even easier to use. In recent months, I have seen an increasing number of USB production jobs where the customer has supplied us with their own USB media to copy on to. Although we always prefer to provide a complete service, we will duplicate onto pre-sourced USBs, however there have been several jobs where the supplied USBs were, shall we say, not of the greatest quality.

To give you a better idea of the effect this can have, one customer required us to upload company data onto 500 of their supplied branded USBs so that they could distribute them at an exhibition to promote brand awareness. During the duplication process, we found that 28% of the sticks had failed to upload (140 units total). Despite trying the sticks again they still would not duplicate as the chip inside them was such poor quality.

As a result, the customer did not have enough USBs for the event and of those sticks that were given out, they could no longer be confident that they would all work when their potential clients tried to use them.

So, businesses looking for bargains may indeed find products which are much cheaper than others on the market and they may think they are getting a great deal, however they are taking a huge gamble.  For instance, if you make a 30% saving on the USBs and 28% of them fail and cannot be used, you haven’t saved any money. Ofcourse, the much greater risk is distributing a low quality product with your branding on, that may not work at all.

Your reputation and recommendations by word of mouth are critical to your success, so paying out a little extra for good quality products from a reliable supplier will give you that vital peace of mind.

Author: Dave Kemble, Account Manager