“Speaking Out” For Individuals Awaiting Organ and Tissue Transplants

As many of you know, our new slogan is “Speak Out.” In fact, you might remember one of our previous blog posts about the tagline which was introduced with our new Website.

In the post, I mentioned that this phrase was carefully chosen to convey multiple meanings. We want you to ‘speak out’ to us when you need new products, when you have new ideas, and certainly when anything goes wrong with a Mark Bric project. We want your customers to ‘speak out’ to help us better understand their needs. And we want to be instrumental in helping you, and your customers, ‘speak out’ in the marketplace, so that your/their message stands out from the crowd.

Willie Cottle

Now we are speaking out ourselves with a message we think you need to hear. Currently there are more than 112,000 individuals in the United States waiting for an organ transplant. One of those individuals is our own dedicated, 15-year employee Willie Cottle who is waiting on a liver transplant. Willie is a valued employee and member of the Mark Bric Display family. 

Willie’s need has heightened the awareness of the importance of registering to be an organ or tissue donor among all of here at Mark Bric Display USA. We would like to use this holiday season as a way to increase your awareness of the need and are speaking out by launching a campaign during the month of December called “Providing the Gift of Hope.” There are two ways to participate in our campaign:

·      For every “Like” Mark Bric Display receives on its Facebook page during the month of December, we will make a donation to Donate Life America on your behalf.

·      Additionally, any person who registers to become an organ or tissue donor through the Donate Life America Website and lets us know that they did by posting it on our Facebook page, will be registered to win a $250 gift card to Amazon.com.

There are currently more than 112,000 people waiting for a transplant. Help us spread the word of the need by “Providing the Gift of Hope” for someone this holiday season.

If you do decide to register, know that your gift could one day be given to a person in need and help to save their life. It could be a father, mother, young child, or our good friend.

Larry Ragland - Mark Bric Display - USA

Thinking Big, Thinking Internationally

We at Mark Bric Display have been vividly reminded recently of the growing impact of global marketing. And we’ve been pleased to be positioned to provide helpful services to several of our US partners as their reach extends to overseas markets.

Sample SnappyFrame Display

Early this year, we were able to assist one of our dealers in setting up a multi-year arrangement to supply custom front-loading SnappyFrames (http://markbricdisplay.com/SnappyFrame/snappyframe.html) to locations worldwide. Their client, a major international staffing company, has offices in countries all over the world, with a heavy concentration in Europe and the US. Shipping large, assembled frames from the US to international locations was creating enormous headaches, trying to deal with country-by-country customs and duties, not to mention the exorbitant cost of freight. We worked up a plan to place inventory at our Virginia facility and at our parent company headquarters in Sweden. Since Sweden is a member of the European Union, we can ship to any of the other 26 countries in the Union as if we’re shipping from state to state in the US—no duties or customs fees, and very efficient freight costs.

Sample SnapUP Display

More recently, we had another partner building a SnapUP (http://markbricdisplay.com/Our-Brands/snapup.html) display for a customer whose first exhibition was in France. Again, we called on our Swedish offices, and they shipped the display hardware directly from their warehouse to the exhibition in France. Graphics were produced in the US by our dealer, and everything came together perfectly for the French exhibition.

Sample EGO Display

In October, one of our dealers designed a very classy EGO (http://markbricdisplay.com/Our-Brands/ego-system.html) display for their medical-devices customer, whose first planned use was inGermany, followed immediately by an exhibition in Switzerland. The display was built entirely in the US and shipped to Germany, but we then called on the Mark Bric network to arrange the set-up and take-down of the complete exhibit in both Frankfurt and in Basel, Switzerland.

Sample ISOframe Display

And now, we’re in the final stages of taking care of a dealer’s needs with yet another international opportunity. Their client selected one of our new ISOframe Wave (http://markbricdisplay.com/Our-Brands/isoframe.html) displays, with first use planned for London. The time-line for production was really tight, so rather than trying to rush through the details and hope to get everything right before shipping from the US to England, we made the offer to have the complete system, including graphics, built in England, delivered direct to the exhibition hall, AND set-up for them! Our dealer was thrilled that we could provide them with this easy hands-off option, even down to including the graphics and thereby eliminating all possible snags, with everything produced by one of our network members with the highest level of expertise with all things related to ISOframe.

Remember, we are here to help and often have the solution or partnerships to meet your needs, whether locally or internationally. Call on Mark Bric Display whenever you’re faced with a project that appears to need more horsepower than you might bring to bear on your own. Especially when international arrangements are needed, we have the network in place to pull it together for you. Even if it’s just a big domestic project, remember that we will play whatever role you need. We can custom design, special-pack, collate, drop ship, etc., for you—for 100, 1,000, or 10,000 locations.

Larry Ragland - Mark Bric USA

The Value of Value

There’s been a recent conversation on our LinkedIn site regarding the type of display product that has brought the most value to the market in the past decade.  Lars Carlsson, Marketing Director of Mark Bric Display in Sweden, placed a strong vote for retractable banner stands, or rollups, and I’d have to fully agree.  From the trade show floor to point of purchase, with all kinds of public spaces such as airports, sports arenas, and museums also included, no other new display product in the past decade has penetrated the market quite so successfully.

Talking about value, I’ve been doing a good bit of thinking during these past few recession-dominated years about value’s broader definition.  What makes one product or service a better value than the next?  One thing is certain---value and price are not interchangeable terms.  The word ‘value’ goes back to the same Latin root word as does the word ‘valor’—both originate with the Latin valere, which means ‘be strong’.  So value, in its purest sense, has close ties to those characteristics that bring worth to people, ideas, and things.

So a good way to talk about value would seem to be to talk about worth—what is ‘it’ worth to you, regardless of what ‘it’ is.  Looked at from this perspective, it’s pretty easy to see that purchase price is only one of many components in establishing the value of anything.  To gain the full measure of value, we really need to spend a little time reviewing the related issues for the product or service in question—issues such as:

•     What do I need from it—my minimum expectations?
•     What do I want from it—my ultimate wish list?
•     Will it solve my current challenge—or create new ones?
•     Will it make my life and my work simpler—or more difficult?
•     Can I trust the provider to support me when things go wrong?
•     Will I be comfortable recommending my choice to my best friend?

At Mark Bric Display, we will always do everything within our power to make sure that we meet all of these important value propositions with a strong affirmative ‘yes’.  And we’ll always try to make sure that you get more than your money’s worth. 

We cannot, of course guarantee to always have the lowest possible price on all products—in fact we don’t really think that’s a healthy business philosophy, since that ‘race to the bottom’ leads only one place—to the bottom.  But when you work with us, you can be sure that you’ll receive fair prices on products that are made to deliver your wants, your needs, and the solutions to your display problems, backed by a trustworthy organization that you can recommend to your best friends without reservation.

That’s the value that we always aim to deliver.  When we’re successful, we hope you’ll tell all your friends and business colleagues.  If we fall short, we hope that you’ll ‘Speak Out’ and bring it to our attention.

Larry Ragland, President, Mark Bric Display USA

Have you seen ISOframe?

During the past year, all of us at Mark Bric Display have been extremely busy getting everything ready for the worldwide launch of the new ISOframe display system.  Formally launched by Mark Bric in late spring, the ISOframe foundation is now solidly in place and ready to play a vital role in your busy fall trade show season. 

The new Mark Bric ISOframe systems come in two major styles—ISOframe Wave and ISOframe Compact.  We have already had some very impressive success stories with the new systems—from museums to retail applications to traditional trade show exhibits.  Now is definitely the time to take a closer look at what it can do for you.

ISOframe Compact brings new excitement to Mark Bric dealers in the form of an elegant display system of the custom modular variety—great looks, a full roster of important accessory items including LCD/LED mounts, brochure holders, and connected tables of all shapes and sizes.  Compact is available in three distinctive versions—Oval, Flying Oval, and Graphic Wing.  See them all at our dedicated product website of www.isoframe.com.

ISOframe Wave is, simply stated, one of a kind—a totally new system that creates the world’s first fully-flexible backwall.  Build a display wall of 10 ft., 20 ft., or even longer, then shape it to precisely fit the needs of your exhibit space and your artistic taste.  Each panel of an ISOframe Wave can be curved and flexed into an infinite number of shapes, providing an unlimited range of display options from a single exhibit kit—truly a revolutionary advancement in portable displays.  See the full details at www.isoframe.com.  Watch a quick demo video on our new YouTube channel...click here.

Both ISOframe Wave and ISOframe Compact share a number of extremely helpful design features, including:

√ All front panels are of one consistent width

√ Both systems feature FASTclamp tool-free construction

√ Typical pop-up graphic panels are easy to produce

√ Everything is covered by Mark Bric’s exclusive 10-year warranty

Don’t fail to take advantage of the new ISOframe systems this trade show season, while everything is still new and represents fresh, exciting choices for you and your customers!

The New Face of Mark Bric Display

Speak Out!

Here’s hoping you fall in love with our brand new Mark Bric Display website—rebuilt from the ground up with the intent of giving you a great user experience.   

We finally decided that it was time to quit hiding all of our great content behind a very confusing maze of menus & links, clicks & clacks!  Seriously, what started for us many years ago as primarily a tool to push information to those dealers/value-added-resellers who pretty well already knew us and our product line had become way too confusing and was no longer really serving anyone all that well.

Soooooooooo…..thanks to a lot of smart folks at our ad agency & our tech support partners, and a combined effort from several corners of the Mark Bric world, we now have a totally new, fresh presence on the web—complete with all of the social media tools that have become such an important piece of the communication puzzle.   

One of the key features that we hope you will appreciate is that our new site should be extremely easy to navigate.  Rather than assume a visitor already knows about Mark Bric products, we’ve organized the new site around the intended product applications—Retail, Roadshow, and Tradeshow.  The Retail and Tradeshow categories are pretty well self-explanatory.  We’re using Roadshow to indicate displays which are easily portable, quickly set up and taken down.  Obviously there will be some product cross-over, but we think you can follow the intent of these application groups.  You can, of course, still click directly to a specific product if you already know what you need.  But if you or your customers are looking for multiple ideas for a given project, the new site should make your life much easier. 

We’ve also added an introductory video in which we have tried to briefly and succinctly explain our strengths---to answer the question of why you and your customers should trust your display business to Mark Bric.  Although we don’t expect you to watch it every time (hence the ‘skip intro’ button—heck, we’re not keeping score!), we hope you will agree that the message gets at the heart of the kind of company we always strive to be---solid products, each with a strong value proposition, and backed by a unique, high-integrity group of long-term associates from around the world, all dedicated to providing you with a total business experience that can’t be beat.

Finally, we’d like to think that the icing on this new cake is contained in our new slogan—Speak Out!.  This phrase was carefully chosen to convey multiple meanings.  We want you to ‘speak out’ to us when you need new products, when you have new ideas, & certainly when anything goes wrong with a Mark Bric project.  We want your customers to ‘speak out’ to help us better understand their needs.  And we want to be instrumental in helping you, and your customers, ‘speak out’ in the marketplace, so that your/their message stands out from the crowd.

So, please review the site, share comments on our new social media venues, use these new tools with your customer base, and ‘speak out’ to let us know what else we can do to help grow your business.  You are, without question, the key to our success!

Larry Ragland,

President, Mark Bric Display USA