There’s a relatively new start up tech company making headlines over the past several months – CFgear – which has been taking the USB Flash drive world by storm with its creative ideas about how to use a simple thing such as the little plug keychain or pen drives that you plug in your computer.
I’ll never forget the first time I purchased a, I think it was 32 meg, thumb drive. It was the best thing in the world. I could work on the company’s server and then pop over to any of the computer stations and make modifications in a flash. And, no longer did I have to burn a slow, poky CD just to take home a file (or save folder after folder to multiple floppy disks)–nope. Instead, I’d just pop in that little thumb drive into my computer, copy the file, and bring it home and pop the thing in my computer there. Incredible. Now, why didn’t I think about inventing something like that years ago :) Right.
Anyway, back to CFgear. They are a relatively new tech start up company based out of South Dakota which handles primarily bulk orders of custom branded USB flash drives for government, educational, nonprofit & business orders. You can pretty much get any style of USB flash drive that you want. I’ve scoured the net just trying hard to find some gossip or trash about them, but I’m not having any luck! Guess that is a good thing for their PR department!
One of the best things about CFgear.com is that you can preload software–such as a short 10 second video of your company–which plays each time a customer plugs in the USB flash drive into their computer. I was reading somewhere that they can even place this preloaded software into a special section on the flash drive so the end user isn’t able to delete it! Now, there’s a good, stuck-with-it marketing technique. Why not? After all, you go to these marketing conventions, meet with some top brass from companies or NPOs or even government agencies, and then you pass out these flashy (pardon the pun) USB thumb drives with your logo on it. And, as if that’s where everything ends, I think not. No–every time that person plugs in the thumb drive into their computer, PRESTO! They’ve got another visual reminder of who gave that item to them. And, c’mon, after days of using that, surely they’d get your branding stuck in their brain and they might just visit your website or give you a call? Especially if you gave them a thumb drive with enough memory on it to make it very long term useful.
CFgear (and I’m assuming the CF stands for custom flash. Correct me anybody if I’m wrong) has partnered with some schools to preload these flash drives with curriculum. Again, the original usb drives of the past are no longer–now you can preload info and make it not possible to delete it. Thus, students have their text on their portable thumb drive and that also cuts back on the school’s server memory too. Think about it … get a 1 Gig thumb drive or even 2 Gig, load it up with curriculum times a couple hundred students … that can be a lot of memory. I’m curious to see if even more schools will do something like this. It also reduces the amount of paper garbage from all the textbooks being ripped up each year. And, if the text gets updated, you can keep the flash drive and just update the info on it! I think schools will find even more creative ways to use these things … the possibilities are endless.
For more information on CFgear, just visit their custom flash gear website at cfgear.com.
Their toll free customer service number is (800) 371-1984
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