Sun and Sting Sampler Promotion Summer 2014

We are currently running our very popular spring time promotion we call our Sun and Sting Sampler.

This is a promotion that we’ve been doing for about 5 years to introduce our customers to some of our seasonal outdoor products.  The quality products included in this give away change from year to year but they are all focused on the outdoor experience. 

The Sun and Sting sampler is free in May of 2014 to all of our current opt in email list.  To get your free promotional offer you  sign up here. 

This year we have a great line up and all of these products are individually packaged for easy addition to your first aid kit.  At the top of the list is SunX sunscreen from Cortex Products in a great little pouch you can take with you in a pocket or in your kit.  We really like SunX because it works so well and goes on without being greasy.

The next two are also from Cortex their very popular IvyX Products.  This year we are giving away one of each the pre-contact and the cleaner.  Hope you don’t need it, but if you do you are going to love it.

We are also featuring two insect products also from Cortex.  We’ve included their BugX insect repellent towelette and one of their StingX pain relief sting pads.

Rounding up the lineup are three great items for your skin.  Two anti-itch products include Dual Action Anti-Itch gel from Cortex and Hydrocortisone cream from Hart Health.  We finish with a 1/8^th ounce sample of Cool Blaze Burn Gel which is an excellent product for use on any kind of burn including sun burn.

Of course all of these quality outdoor products are available on our website.

Hope you all have a terrific summer season.

 

New First Aid Supplies Online Website coming soon.

After 14 years it is time to bring www.firstaidsuppliesonline.com into the main stream of 21^st Century technology.  We are developing a brand new website to be launched very soon but it’s not too late to give us your input.  Please take our survey  because your opinion counts.

We’ve received lots of feedback from our customers over the last 14 years and we think we have a pretty good handle on what you want your website experience to be.  Many of these things we’ve done well over the years and some things needed updating.  The things that have been working we’ll keep and improve.  Things that need to change will be changed.

What we’ve heard very consistently over the years is “keep it clean, easy to navigate, secure and easy to checkout.  So that’s what the new website will do only we’ll use new technology to do it.  That means the website will look and navigate in a very familiar way but load faster, have larger easier to see graphics and allow you view your purchase history.  You’ll also be able write and read reviews, track orders and keep wish lists.  We will continue our commitment to protect your information with top notch security.

As soon as we have a go live date we will publish that date and disseminate that information as widely as possible.  In the meantime we will continue to work hard to earn your business every day.

Once again, please take a few minutes and give us your input on our survey or contact us directly with your questions.

Startling AED Facts

I recently receive and article from our AED vendor Heartsine, maker of the Samaritan Public Access Defibrillator.  The article was a collection of anecdotes about how an AED had saved someone’s life.  As I read these real life stories of near death it suggested to me that we ought to reach out to our customer base and blog followers with some of the facts.

As compelling as the stories were my purpose today is to present you with the startling facts about the need for AEDs.  Sudden cardiac arrest or SCA is a big problem world-wide but I wanted to bring the figures home so that could see how largely this risk looms in our lives daily.  At the same time we wanted to let you know just how easy it is to be prepared for this.  Check out the facts with my comments below, our easy solution follows.

According to the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation

“Each year, 424,000 people in the U.S. (more than 1,000 a day) experience EMS-assessed out-of-hospital non-traumatic SCA, and nine out of 10 victims die.”

That means about 380,000 people a year die of SCA.

They go on to say “the number of people who die each year from SCA is roughly equivalent to the number who die from Alzheimer’s disease, assault with firearms, breast cancer, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer, diabetes, HIV, house fires, motor vehicle accidents, prostate cancer and suicides combined.”

In addition to the risk of death, irreparable brain damage can occur in a 4-6 minutes of SCA

Paramedics take an average of 8-10 minutes to arrive.

So there real problem here is that gap between when SCA begins and when help arrives with a defibrillator.  If it is going to take 911 response 8-10 minutes to arrive then you had better have a pretty good plan B.

Rapid treatment of sudden cardiac arrest with a defibrillator can save lives.  I would add to this that rapid treatment with a defibrillator can save you from serious brain damage as well.

The great news and our easy solution is that AEDs are more affordable now than they have ever been.

In fact you can get a great quality AED for at our website right now for only $1,175.00 We currently feature the Heartsine Samaritan PAD 350-SYC-US-10 Public Access Defibrillator for that low price.

If you have one of our exciting Ecoupon discount codes you can trim a substantial  part of that price and get yourself a tremendous bargain to boot.  To get one of those valuable Ecoupon codes you simply opt in to our email list.  Opt in here.

Closeout and Clearance products offer some tremendous values.

About 5 years ago one of our biggest vendors called me to let us know that a big shipment of first aid cabinets that we had ordered had arrived and failed QC.  Their immediate concern was to find a way to fulfill the order with a different product but the conversation did pique my curiosity.

They had a container load of first cabinets that didn’t pass their quality control.  In this case it meant that the silk screening on the front of the cabinets was not acceptable.  So I asked if I could have a look and they said sure.  What I found was that the cabinets were fine quality it’s just that the silk screening was not perfect.   They didn’t look bad, they just weren’t perfect.

They didn’t feel like they could charge us the full price of the order if the silk screening wasn’t done to specification and they were correct in that assessment.  We asked them what they were going to do with all those cabinets and they said they would just put them in the dumpster.  Yikes!

That’s when our closeout/clearance page came to fruition.  I thought rather than waste all these otherwise great kit cabinets we could sell them as closeout/clearance products.  So we launched our closeout page with three different cabinet sizes to choose from and put them on sale for less than half price.  The only catch was they wanted us to take delivery of the entire shipment so overnight we were up to the rafters in first aid cabinets.  It was really kind of spooky initially with pallets of first aid cabinets plied up everywhere getting in the way.

The story does have a happy ending however.  In less than 6 months we had sold more than half of the cabinets and by the end of the year they were all gone to good homes.  Since then we’ve added dozens of items over time and our closeout/clearance page has become quite popular.

We recommend that you have a look and bookmark the page as the items offered there change frequently and once they are gone they are gone.

So what will you find at our closeout/clearance page?  There will always be some quality first aid products available there for various reasons.  Some will be there because they are close to their expiration dates.  Other products are being closed out because they were slow movers and are taking up room in the warehouse.  Still others have been discontinued by the manufacturer whatever the reason it give you a great opportunity to pick up some great first aid products at tremendous bargains.

Keep in mind that all closeout items are sold as is and may not be returned.  Having said that, clearance items qualify for free shipping just like any other items and you can use any promotional discount Ecoupons you have.    

Planning ahead as Spring approaches and outdoor activity increases.

Every year about this time we start hearing from sports teams, outdoor recreation facilities, camps, YMCA’s, State and National Parks and many municipal parks and recreations departments as they ramp up for another busy season.   They are all looking to save money on the quality first aid supplies they know they are going to need for the upcoming season. 

We have had the privilege to supply many hundreds, if not thousands of these types or organizations over the last 15 years or so and we’ve learned a great deal from them and wanted to pass along a few tidbits that you can use for your family or organization this spring.

The first tip is to sign up for opt-in email list as we send out special promotional offers on a regular basis.  These promotional offers almost always include discount Ecoupons and often come with a free gift.  The savings realized here could save you 10-25% or more when you take into consideration our free freight policy.  Opt in to our email list here.

Our second tip is to buy in bulk when you can.  We discovered long ago that you can stretch your dollars when you buy in bulk.  A great example of this is our instant ice packs which are very popular this time of year.  We offer those in two popular sizes and start with cases of 25, 50 and yes 125!

Check out our bulk instant ice packs here.

The next tip is bugs.  You know they are going to join you on the field.  So we have insect sting products in our “Critters Bites and Stings” category and some of which you can buy in bulk and save.

Check out our sting products here.

The last tip to share today is to plan ahead.  You don’t want to have to start you season without your first aid supplies.  Once you get you wish list together make sure you get your orders placed in a timely fashion as it takes time to process the orders usually 24-48 hours.  Depending upon what part of the country you are in it could take an additional 5 business days to get your order delivered to your location.

Thoughts on Liquid Skin

We just had a cold spell.  For here that means temperatures down in to the low twenties.  I know, I know, big deal you say we had 20 below last week.

For the record, the content of this post doesn’t make a distinction as to degree of cold in any given cold spell.  Suffice it to say that it got cold and dry.  The kind of cold and dry that wrecks your skin and loads up everything you wear with that nasty annoying static electricity.  You know what I am talking about.

Anyhow in this last episode my hands got so dry and chapped that I started to get cracks in my cuticles.  The kind that show up all of sudden and crack straight down to the quick and smart like heck.  I got one of those going and tried to live in denial for a day or so but it became so painful that I had trouble buttoning my shirt; never mind trying to help with the dishes.

So my bride says to me, why don’t you put some of that Liquid Skin stuff on it and see if that helps?

Because she has lived with me for almost 35 years and has had to listen to endless hours of product related shop talk she knows our products almost as much as I do and some even better.  So I had to pay heed to her suggestion although I was certain that it was probably going to sting like crazy when I put it on.  Gotta maintain that macho male image!

Long story short I opened one of the Liquid Skin™ pipettes and put a little dab on the split and to my happy surprise, I didn’t feel a thing.  I blew on the dab until it dried, just a couple of minutes and right away I felt a lot better.  The constant pain I had been in was gone.   The pain and discomfort was gone but now there was a shiny little cover over the split on my finger.

That shiny little cover stayed in place over the weekend and in to the new week.  As of today the split is still protected and it has been three days since I first applied the Liquid Skin, amazing!

You know what I’m going to say next, get some Liquid Skin for your first aid kit but have it on hand next time you get a hangnail or cuticle split  or a busted blister or you name it.   Liquid Skin™ helps even if you’re not bleeding.

Just thought I’d pass that on

To Van or Not to Van, That is the Question?

First Aid Supplies Online had been dedicated to the success of all first aid supply do it yourselfers since we launched our first commercial website back in 1999!  We are gung ho on saving our customers time and money that’s we developed out online do it yourself tools.

Those tools have been used by thousands of companies and institutions over the last 15 years and save hundreds of thousands of dollars for our customers.  This has been such a successful campaign that sometimes we get complacent and take it for granted.  So in this blog post I wanted to relate a recent customer anecdote to put this in to perspective.

The customer is a large culinary college in the Midwest with 14 different first aid kit locations.  They approached us last spring and asked us to provide our price on a list of products they were getting from a large National van based First Aid Service Company.  We provided the prices and although we didn’t get to see the competitor’s pricing the college did go with us as their vendor and they became first aid supply do it yourselfers.

We got a nice email from them at the first of the year and they wanted us to know how much they had saved.  It turns out that the van first aid company had been coming in once a month to service the first aid kits and the average monthly bill was $750.00.  They went on to explain that since they became first aid supply do it yourselfers they’ve cut their cost by over 80% which means they are on schedule to save about $7,200.00 a year on first aid supplies.  Are they happy?  You bet.

Why did they get such outstanding results you ask?  It is a really simple formula that relies on taking responsibility for your first aid supplies in house and finding a vendor partner with the tools and the experience to help.  That’s what we do at First Aid Supplies Online and we’d be delighted to show you how we can make that formula work for your organization.

For more information email us.

Watch our informative 3 minute video "Get off the van" and learn how to save 50% on first aid supplies.