Playing Cards On Demand Interview With Jen Dusenberg

Playing Cards On Demand website

Universal Unilink members can view their program pricing from Playing Cards On Demand on the private member site.

 

Transcript

Marty Hartman: Playing cards are incredibly popular in the United States, and I bet if you go into anybody’s house, you’re going to find a deck of playing cards, or probably multiple decks, somewhere in the house. It’s a huge industry, and that’s why we’re really excited to have this Jen Duesenberg with playing cards on demand.

She’s going to spend some time with us and talk about the opportunity that you have with this incredible market. Jen, thanks for being with us.

Jen Dusenberg: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to share some opportunities and ideas with the team and see how we can continue to grow sales.

Marty Hartman: Tell us a little bit about, uh, the company.

Jen Dusenberg: Sure. Okay. Well, many of you are probably familiar with Jamaica. They had started in the promotional products industry in 1965. Um, so they’ve been around forever and I started with them initially in 2019 is where we switched to playing cards on demand. Um, we were sold off to another company. They kind of did not want to participate in a promotional products company.

So we rebranded, um, a lot of the same people, machinery, quality, myself, a lot of us came over, but now we switched our names to playing cards on demand, but we do have the same quality and the background with Jamaica, which had been the industry forever at the leader in the industry for playing cards. So it’s a spinoff, new company, technically name wise, but a lot of the Products and great quality.

Marty Hartman: So you’ve got the experience with this

Jen Dusenberg: sure. Since 1965. It’s been around for quite a while and has always been the playing card leader. So we’ve continued that tradition of excellence and quality in the industry.

Marty Hartman: Well, that’s great. So, um, tell us a little about, about what you do at the company.

Jen Dusenberg: so, um, I’ve been around, so this is my 20th year just actually, and I’m in September, which is crazy. Um, but, uh, yeah, so I’m Vice President of Sales and Marketing. I help everything from start to finish. Um, product development, sales meetings, trade shows, um, as a whole, just about anything that we do. Um, I kind of head up and just, uh, divide out with my team, but anything and everything I’m involved in with the company as a whole.

Marty Hartman: Okay. Well, some of our members might not be familiar with, uh, all the ins and outs of playing cards. So tell us about, uh, the opportunity with your products and a little bit more about the products you offer.

Jen Dusenberg: Yeah, so our core product is playing cards. Um, we make the casino quality playing cards, which is super important, um, to know what we do is going to be a paper stock. That is a two ply paper. I’m going to give you a few examples, but it’s a two ply paper. It has excellent snap and memory, which is super important for the ability to, to deal it, to shuffle it.

And, um, for the longevity of the product. It’s printed and coded, um, on superior casino quality paper. So that’s super important, um, for the longevity of the product as a whole. They stay around for years. Um, and so that’s our core product. Um, we have everything that encompasses everything from just generic decks, logo decks.

We also have kids games, other opportunities, um, to just do some kids games, adult games. Just various products that we have in the playing card segment. All of them can be completely customized and logoed. Um, and our minimums are just 25 decks. So super low minimums.

Marty Hartman: that’s great.

Jen Dusenberg: yeah, everything nearly, with the exception of one product, everything is USA made.

We do have one product that we import, it’s a Chinese deck, it’s more of an economy deck that we make a box for. But other than that, everything is USA made casino quality paper.

Marty Hartman: Absolutely. Uh, but I think, uh, going. Forward for the next few years, uh, USA made products are going to be more and more important.

So I’m glad you mentioned that.

Jen Dusenberg: yes. and we’re in Kansas City, um, same place that Jamaica was, so quick lead times, quick turnarounds. Um, and everything’s made anywhere from four to seven days after proof approval. So, super fast, super

Marty Hartman: So relatively low minimums and, uh, you can do customization of the card. So what kind of customization can, uh, members order for their customers?

Jen Dusenberg: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the fun and cool things we can do to, I think really deciphers our product from other products in the industry is custom faces. So you always have a common back on a deck of cards, as you can see here, but you have the ability to customize each face to really tell a story.

So like this is a custom Joker. So this is Idaho potato recipes. They put a custom Joker, um, and then just different recipes for potatoes on the card faces. So each one can be completely customized. So it gives you 54 unique opportunities to really tell your story, show your brand, tell history, um, give facts, show products. It’s an endless opportunity for complete custom creativity.

Marty Hartman: Oh, that’s really interesting. So have you, can you think of any, uh, particular applications that customers have come up with? That’s kind of unique using those custom

Jen Dusenberg: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so we do a lot of customization and it can be anything from universities that have showed a prominent alumni places on campus to visit 54 things you should do on campus. We’ve had tool companies, um, show all their different tools that they manufacture. That you just wouldn’t even think of like, Oh, hey, they could do this wrench and this screwdriver and this industrial tool. And it just really shows them a and they put a lot of times QR codes, which will drive people to their product website.

Marty Hartman: that’s a great idea.

Jen Dusenberg: to see the details of the product. So, um, everything from that. Another cool job we’ve done, um, was LinkedIn. Uh, it was a huge order that we did this year, and they put, like, things you should not put on your LinkedIn profile.

Things you should put on your LinkedIn profile. So, really cool use of a big technology company, um, using a product to really tell their story, show their brand, and kind of explain different things. It was a unique application that LinkedIn used.

Marty Hartman: So, I mean, it just depends about, uh, how creative, uh, a distributor wants to be when presenting this to a customer.

Jen Dusenberg: Absolutely. A lot of times people do just some really cool ways to tell their story and show their brand. Um, creativity can be four color process pictures, something simple, just a lot of copy, or we can do something, you know, that’s full color. Um, like here’s an example of some of the LinkedIn ones that we did with their logo on the back.

You can see, and then each face card is customized and they just did different things, conversation starters, things like that. So it’s

Marty Hartman: Oh, that’s a really great idea. So, uh, do you have some designers on, on your staff that can help, uh, our members?

Jen Dusenberg: we have templates. Um, yes, we can provide some guidelines. We don’t do all the design work just because as you can imagine with 55 files, the logo on the back, and then 54 unique face files. It’s very, um, time consuming with all the orders that we do. We generally have probably 15 to 20 of these going every week.

Um, with the complete customization, we do a ton of, uh, of these. Um, but our templates are super easy to work for, work with, and it has, uh, the 55 page file. The first PDF is the back and then each face card falls in line and you can just easily drop in the artwork, the copy images, whatever they’re doing on each face file and then submit it that way.

So it’s a 55 page total file that we get. And then we print it off of there and provide you a full PDF proof so you can see the layout of the cards, how they’re going to appear and all the details of it.

Marty Hartman: So, if, uh, members wanted to get their hands on some of these cards too, what about samples?

Jen Dusenberg: absolutely. We’re happy to provide samples. You would just send it to samples at playingcardsondemand. com We, um, request a third party shipping. You can have four or five decks, whatever you need. We’ll get them shipped out. You can always request like, hey, I’m approaching a college or a manufacturer.

Put all those details in there and we’ll do our best to pull from the samples and get you whatever sample that most coordinates with what you’re looking for to help you get an order in and

Marty Hartman: Oh, that’d be great. When trying to make the sale that having that sample in hand so they can get it. The customer gets an idea. So it sounds like you guys have it covered with your playing cards. Is there anything else that you you can do for our members that might surprise them?

Jen Dusenberg: Um, yeah, absolutely. So the other products that we offer, um, in addition to the playing cards, we do bookmarks, full color, we have coloring ones, custom ones, or a really nice, um, playing card or bookmark start, um, that is 17 and a half points and it’s super, um, great quality. We also make little notebooks.

That are saddle stitched and stapled and we have complete customization on the inside pages You can add logos to the top and then coloring books is a huge thing for us We have tons of theme designs and seasonal designs that you can utilize And the coloring books they’ve got great graphics and the paper is bright white pages So we have lots of themed options for every season be active eat healthy visiting the doctor visiting the dentist all those Theme designs you can choose from Um, we have adult ones and kid ones.

So like there’s some wellness programs you’re working on. We have some simple patterns and flowers and more stress relieving things for adults. Or then lots of themes for kids. And then you can do,

Marty Hartman: Adult coloring books have really gained in popularity

Jen Dusenberg: They have, yes. And in addition, we can also do custom too. So if you have a project you’re working on and want to do your own custom product, we can absolutely do, um, the layout for that, figure that out for you. Those are obviously quoted based on how much artwork and all the details, but you can do a complete custom, um, coloring book as well with custom front, back, and the pages inside as well.

Marty Hartman: Okay. And those samples of

Jen Dusenberg: on those as well.

Marty Hartman: Okay. Samples of coloring books are available through your sample

Jen Dusenberg: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Marty Hartman: Anything else in your product line you’d like to tell us about?

Jen Dusenberg: Um, there’s nothing specific other than we’re really good at virtuals, really good at, um, we do poker chips too, I guess I should mention that. Also, poker chips, if you’re looking for that, great for golf ball markers, drink tokens, any of those things, raffles, business cards. We do quite a few of those. Um, so poker chips.

Um, but we’re happy to help with virtuals. And give you help you give you ideas. We know that virtuals turn into orders. And so we have a great team that’s creative that loves to help with ideas Generation or any of those things you’re working on feel free to reach out to us We love to work through those projects and ideas and it just helps generate sales for everyone. So happy to help with that always

Marty Hartman: Definitely get those virtual samples. I think, uh, you’ve given some great ideas for our members to think about and I hope they’ll give a call and start the discussion because it sounds like some unique items that they can present to their customers.

Jen Dusenberg: we’re always happy to help. The orders at PlayingCardsOnDemand.com email is the best for quotes, virtuals, questions, specs, whatever you need. We’re happy to help. So feel free to send us anything. Let us know how we can get you going on some ideas and we’re happy to work and it’s very much a collaborative effort.

We appreciate the preferred, you know, distributors that we work with and whatever we can do to help you. We’re happy to do so. Yeah.

Marty Hartman: before we close this session, anything else you want to tell our members?

Jen Dusenberg: Um, just reach out. Looking forward to seeing anyone at any of the upcoming shows in 2025. Let us know how we can, um, assist you and we’re excited to work together.

Marty Hartman: All right. Well, Jen, thanks so much for spending some time with us today.

Jen Dusenberg: Thank you for having me. Let us know how we can help.