New York, NY, United States (AHN) – The season for giving and receiving gifts is now Christmas Past. Now, it is the season for returning unwanted presents.

Dubbed “Mega Monday,” Dec. 26 is expected to be the third busiest shopping day of 2011, with scores of people heading to stores in droves in search of after-Christmas bargains and to return items.

Stores are forecast to ring up $469.1 billion over this holiday season, which extends from Nov.1 through New Year’s Eve. The final week before Christmas accounts for up to 20 percent of those sales, with the week after the holiday also being very brisk.

Some retailers underestimated the resilience of the American shopper, believing they weren’t ready to spend during the still-weak economy. However, the National Retail Federation reports that the two-month period has been busy, and it upgraded its overall sales growth forecast a full percentage point, to 3.8 percent.

Some shoppers are just getting started, putting off buying big ticket items until after Christmas, looking for blockbuster year-end specials.

Stores are also preparing for the rush to exchange and return gifts. Many stores have changed their return policy, shortening the number of days customers can return an item and requiring a receipt for cash back.

For those that find they can’t return, there is an option. We promise not to tell if you save that unwanted present and re-gift it next year.

View full post on All Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Despite the lackluster economy, the Christmas spirit lives. A new survey from AAA finds that Americans will travel in record numbers this holiday season.

Nearly 92 million Americans are expected to drive or fly 50 miles or more from home between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2. That represents a 1.4 percent increase over the same period last year and marks the second highest yearend travel forecast in a decade.

At the same time, airline travel is expected to drop 1 percent over the 21 days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s. The U.S. airline industry’s trade group, Airlines for America, predicts 43.3 million people will fly by air this holiday season, the smallest number since the organization started collecting holiday travel data seven years ago.

Amtrak, which doesn’t use predictions, is on pace to set an annual ridership record of 30.2 million passengers for 2011. During the Thanksgiving week, the rail service reported a 2.8 percent increase in ridership over 2010.

However you are traveling, the trip will cost more this year. AAA says the average for regular unleaded gas is $3.21 a gallon, 22 cents higher than the same time last year. Airline tickets are also higher across the board.

AAA offers the following tips for those traveling by road: avoid peak travel time; check road conditions; pack for delays or disruptions (snack, flashlight, blankets, car cell phone); and rest up before a long trip.

For air travel, AAA advises packing light; printing out boarding passes; checking for delays; don’t wrap gifts; get to the airport early; and don’t forget your ID.

And for all travelers by road, rail or air, relax–it”s the holiday.

View full post on All Stories

Have you ever considered notepad printing for your business during the holidays? While most will of course print their holiday promotions through posters, brochures and catalogs, only few will consider custom notepads. In this article however, I will tell you that notepad printing is a great alternative promotional material that you can print for the holidays. Let me give you the facts for this point per point.

• Good cheer and some marketing talk – Custom notepads are great holiday gifts to your customers that should communicate your holiday greetings and good cheer. Moreover, whether the color notepads are a nice perk you give away to loyal customers, or it is an actual freebie for a certain amount purchased, color notepads can easily be an incentive you can give to get more people to buy from you.

Unlike flyers, catalogs or brochures though that people tend to throw away after a while, custom notepads are quite useful since they can of course be used for making notes and drawings. So basically the notepads can sell people your products and services while still being useful for the company itself as a marketing tool. It is a nice mutually beneficial relationship which is important in marketing this holiday season.

• Greeting your investors and clients – Full color custom notepads are also quite useful if you plan on impressing your investors and clients at the company’s end of the year gathering or at a company meeting. Giving them a nice fully detailed custom notepad of the company can give the subtle impression that the company is doing well enough to print its own notepads. Moreover, you can use the opportunity to communicate your yuletide greetings by adding that greeting into the custom notepad design itself. So you can basically build connections and show you care for your investors and clients through the simple use of custom notepads.

• A little gift for your staff – Finally, you can also use custom notepads as holiday gifts to give your employees or staff. People of course will find your notepads useful, while they can take pride in knowing that their company cares enough to give them extra gifts like notepads. You of course may also include your own holiday greetings within the notepad design itself. This kind of good internal communication habits can help you maintain a good level of morale for your staff this holiday season and help them see you as an appreciative employer.

So there are indeed concrete reasons why you can use notepad printing as a tool to help your business this holiday season. If you can spare some money for printing notepads you can really help yourself in achieving your promotional and public relation goals by the end of the year.

Visit these sites for more information on notepad printing and custom notepads

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/printing-articles/custom-notepads-for-the-holidays-1758541.html

Okay, the weather is turning cold, Halloween is done, and the holiday season will soon be in full swing. Are your promotional brochures ready? If you do not have holiday brochures plan now, I recommend you get one as fast as possible.

Since the Christmas season is where a lot of people buy things for presents, the competition is pretty tough. Your brochure printing project must be ready and primed for this early on so that you can deploy early as well. If you want to get your holiday brochures ready in time, here are a few tips that should get you started.

•    Look for new templates – It may be good to look for new brochure templates to get things started. Your old templates might not be as ideal now as before, and maybe there are new types of templates with different layouts and dimensions that you want to try out. It is bad using the same old templates year in and year out right? So see if there are new promising templates that might enhance the look of your holiday ads.

•    Look for new fonts – It is also good to try out new fonts. Those default fonts in templates will not do in festive times like this. It is best to look for happy fonts that deliver the spirit and joy that the times have to offer. There should be plenty of nice holiday themed fonts out there that you can download. Even a simple search via an internet search engine for “free Christmas fonts” should be enough to net you a few hundred results. Just use something that is unique that most people do not usually use. This should give you a nice fresh look.

•    Look for new backgrounds – If you want to refresh the body of your brochures, I recommend using new and festive backgrounds. There are plenty out there to choose from. You can download holiday backgrounds from the net, from snowflake backgrounds to winter backgrounds. Moreover, you can actually use plain colors to good effect with your backgrounds.

Using a color gradient as a filter for your background is a good example of color backgrounds. You can use green and red and see how they seamlessly change at the middle of a gradient color background. Try to use the colors that you have not used before so that you can see its difference with your other batches. Just choose the new background that seems most reasonable.

•    Looking for new special effects – Lastly, you may want to look into adding a few new special effects. If last time you just used nice pictures and paintings, this time you might try something bolder. For example, adding holes is an alternative way to get attention. You can put holes in the cover while behind the hole. A nice design element fits it, to show something good. Just try adding a special gimmick or design feature like that so that people can remember the brochure more easily this holiday season.

With all these new material, you should be able to produce a new and perhaps more competitive holiday brochure. Just make sure that you always try to be original so that your printing output will be as effective as possible.

Know more about the brochure printing technologies used in the production of business brochures.

Katie Marcus writes information about printing company and printing technologies.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/printing-articles/getting-your-holiday-brochures-ready-1726139.html