This Chinese New Year ODM are giving away some awesome Lucky Monkey Socks!  2016 is the year of the Monkey. Our team are all about thinking on their feet.  Combine the 2 and here is our offer..

Monkey Socks are now in production and we are going to give them out at client meetings & trade shows. We’ll also be happy to send you some free socks with every sample we send out.

The Promotional Products world is all about colour matching and pantones.  For this reason we are making the socks in 3 different colours.  The importance of choosing the right colour for brands is key and it is important to understand the symbolism of colours.

Which Monkey Sock works best for you?

Red – China and the Chinese New year are strongly associated with the colour red.  This is the traditional colour for most gifts and Lai See Packets you see over CNY.   Wear red to enjoy all that luck and happiness engendered in this strong red sock.  Get noticed.

 

Yellow – The centre of everything, Ying and Yang.  It is the most beautiful colour in the world for many in Chinese culture. It also is claimed to signify neutrality and good luck, so who doesn’t want this on our feet?  Yellow/Gold is the second most popular colour for Chinese New Year.

Blue – Here’s a nod to Mindsparkz.  Our incredible design and invention team is constantly pushing the boundaries every Chinese year. We thought you could do with a little of their drive and motivation, so here’s a gift from us to you.

The Journey – Some Monkey Magic.

As always, ODM educate and communicate through our blog and we love to share our adventures.  We will be commenting on inspiration, design, packaging, production, marketing and client feedback.

Inspiration

When considering which gift to offer, the first step of our design process is to organise a conceptual brainstorming session. We get together in the conference room in order to release some creative juices and come up with the best idea.   We actively discuss the practicalities of concepts and fill our whiteboards.

On our blog there are many different examples of companies around the world using socks for marketing.  Here are 4 exmaples.  Tour de France, ICG, Disney, Auchan

Click to see:  Promotional Socks Brainstorm Session.

Design

Visit the Product Designer blog by Mindsparkz to learn more about Designing Socks.   The Designing Socks article talks you through the process.   If you ever thought of making socks, this is a critical starting point.  Lessons learned on design for this product can be carried over to so many more wearables.

Sampling

We are extremely proud to have an excellent sock factory.  For the creation of these funky socks, understanding manufacturing process is critical for good design. After completing the design of our lucky monkey, it’s then time to kick-start the sampling process at our factory.

Stages of our monkey sock production process:

1. Materials. Our lucky monkey socks consists of 76% cotton, 22% polyester and 2% elastane. This combination let us keep with our colour scheme, maintain high standards of quality and importantly retain the elasticity for a long period of time.
2. Digital grid map. The factory then process our lucky monkey logo into a digital grid map using a specialist computer software. Each individual square represents a sewing point whilst the shading represents the different colours of yarn needed for stitching.
3. Computer process. This grid map is then entered into another computer functioning the operations of the sewing machine.
4. Stitching. The needles finally act in accordance to the mapping and our lucky monkey is then embroiled into the sock.

Click to see:  Sampling Process – Our Lucky Monkey Socks

Mass Production

Once sampling was completed and approved, we need to design the sock packaging and tags. When shipping overseas and distributing personally, packaging is essential to keep the socks clean and fresh. With this in mind, we decided to use this open-top plastic polybag to carry our socks.

With the support of our sock factory and our numerous sock case studies we decided to use a thin layer of laminated card attached with a useful hanger to tag our socks.

In designing the actual tag, we shortlisted our design to include:

Lucky Monkey logo.
The Year of the Monkey.
A way to follow the journey.
Material formula and washing instructions.
Made in China.

Click to see: Sock Packaging and Tag Design: Our Lucky Monkey Socks

Our New Green Lucky Monkey Socks

These green socks were made to promote St Patrick’s Day celebrations and to promote the green colour of Ireland’s pride as well as the pride of the ODM Group. Which makes these socks a great promotional gift idea for events!

What’s more these socks not only represent the spirit of St Patricks Day, but the green colour matches the ODM green company logo and helps to enhance ODM’s lucky monkey spirit.

Click to see: Introducing our Green Lucky Monkey Socks

Chinese New Year 2016: The Year of the Monkey

The Monkey is the final leg of the 12-year Zodiac Cycle. Although those who were born in the monkey years; 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, etc, are expected to be incredibly unlucky and unfortunate, there are some great things to become within this year. Keep an eye on lucky numbers 4 and 9, and make sure to grow some crab-mythle if you have some spare space in the back garden.

Make sure to keep an eye on our twitter & Facebook as we’ll be talking about this production at length.   2016 is going to be a big year for us.  Join us for the journey!