Best selling author Craig Kielber, the Canadian human rights activist, and recipient of the Nelson Mandela Freedom Medal sure had a point when he said
"Time flies when you are changing the world"
 
2023 is a thing of the past and so too is an event that took place for the second time in South Africa, back in August of 2003 - The World Cooks Tour Food Hunger! This was the tenth anniversary of the first World Cooks Tour for Hunger where in 1993, over 150 chefs from around the world visited our shores, at their own expense, and literally cooked up a storm in various hotel restaurants around our country. This initiative was the brain-child of the late Dr Bill Gallagher, a legend of a chef himself, who led the SA Chefs Association, the managing coordinators of the event, under the auspices of WACS (The World Association of Cooks Society). Tiger Brands was the gracious headline sponsor of the event.
 
We were members of the committee who managed the even,t and are proud today of the fact that the event raised a magnificent R1.3 Million Rands towards the two main beneficiaries of the fund-raising effort: HEARTBEAT and The African Children's Feeding Scheme. At the time The African Children's Feeding Scheme fed 14 000 children daily in both formal and informal settlements around South Africa.
 
As one writes of this 20 year old memory we realise and only now properly appreciate and understand the importance of nutrition - in particular a diet consisting of high quality protein - in the growth of a young child's developing brain, and feel blessed to have played a small part in such a deeply effective project that would have had far reaching benefits for many growing children back then, who are probably active adults today.
 
The Southern Sun Hotel group ran Nationally themed Cuisine promotions in many of their hotel restaurants and generous guests contributed towards the project. Here we show the promotional posters that we designed - Canadian Cuisine at The Atrium Restaurant at Sandton Towers and A Taste of England at the Gazebo and the Ferns Restaurant at Sandton Sun. Chefs from Canada and England respectively, were involved in the preparation of the special food that was served.
 
Perhaps it is time to revisit this idea...

A garment specification sheet or spec sheet is a technical document that contains the construction details of a product, a technical diagram/sketch of the garment and the measurements of a product.
• With our clothing, all the half chest measurements are shown in the catalogue and these are taken from the spec sheet
• The industry norm is a tolerance of 2cm, i.e. 2cm smaller or bigger than the spec.
• For example if the ½ chest spec is 49cm, it is internationally accepted if the item is 47cm as well as 51cm.
• Although our factories work hard to adhere to the supplies specs, garments are never all 100% according to spec.
Some of the reasons for this is that fabric gets layered in many layers before the pattern pieces are cut out and sometimes material shifts slightly during the process, or a machine operator may take a little more seam allowance on a garment. Each garment is sewn individually and as such will vary slightly from one to the other.
 
SHADE TOLERANCE
• There are many factors which affect the dyeing process of greige fabric (an unfinished woven or knitted fabric that
hasn’t been bleached or dyed) including water in the area, time of the year, temperature, fabric being dyed etc
• Our suppliers use a handful of different factories around the country and the world to produce our items and although we do our best to keep the shading as close as possible from one batch to the next, there may be slight shade variances.
• Subtle differences can appear between different batches of the same colour fabric dyed by the same manufacturer so centralising the dyeing process would not eliminate this variance.
• We make use of Lab dips (accepted colour swatches) which are sent to all our factories to ensure that the batch colours are as close as possible.
• Internationally there is an acceptable shading tolerance of one shade on either side (lighter or darker).
• While care is taken through the whole dyeing process as well as the lab dips and a number of QC checks during the manufacturing process, it is expected that one batch of a clothing item would vary slightly from the next.

As a graphic designer running an owned business selling graphic design services and branded solutions from Corporate Gifts to indoor and outdoor display media, to websites, I often wonder how my competition is doing. I attended our local supplier, AMROD’s new catalogue launch and symposium last week, on 22 August, and got to experience some of the feedback that I had sought…
 
The Corporate Gift sector of the Marketing Services industry in South Africa is to coin the phrase - chugging along - having experienced massive growth in the decade and a half leading up to 2020. Following the still recent COVID three year disaster, the sector is now back on it’s proverbial feet. AMROD launched their first printed catalogue following a 3 year hiatus. When AMROD, who are notorious for their aggressive expansion across the corporate gifting and recently into display media sectors of industry, were not releasing catalogues, then that says something about the pulse of “industry” and the negativity of COVID’s insidious knock-on effects.  
 
Since 2020, TNT Design & Promo has certainly felt the lag in demand for our wide spread of different offerings, within the current mix Corporate Gifts taking the mainstay of orders followed by a matched tussle between Graphic Design Services and Display Media. Traditionally we welcome the opportunity to quote on just about any branded medium or design solution and have successfully provided orders across a wide range of client enquiries.
 
Just recently we supplied some extraordinarily effective over-size pull up banners. The client was on the road doing multiple presentations at a number of South African Cities and needed impact that could be carried efficiently on air transport. (See image of the 1.5 meter by 2.3 meter high pull up banner that certainly did the trick in terms of visibility on stage next to the speaker).

Our conversion from quote to order is an on-going concern however. This challenge appears, from discussions with other stakeholders in industry that we chatted with at the AMROD Launch, is a common trend. COVID was devastating in that it caused our clients to all but cancel marketing and promotions, which occur right at the periphery of the financial spend basket or end of the value chain. Who could blame them for taking care of their staff under trying circumstances.
 
The good news is that branded goods or “Merch” as the new catchphrase refers to, are ever popular and our offering remains broad. The quality of Corporate gifts continues to improve and our clients are able to explore multiple price points on a large variety of options that ensures “bang for the buck” spent.
 
For those marketing service providers who have weathered the storm, the proverbial survivors of the COVID Cull, there is ample future opportunity on the horizon, we are just not sure of stability of the system that heretofore acted as the bedrock that the likes of ourselves and AMROD to have evolved out of.