It was the week of Thanksgiving 2018 when Leon Kramer received a phone call that immediately grabbed his attention. A company he had never worked with before needed a very special project done by the middle of December. Kramer was all ears.

“A healthcare company called us out of the blue, asking if we could make invitations out of old vinyl records for the Grammys in February,” says the director of sales for LMS Brandz (asi/246953) in San Francisco. “I wasn’t sure we could do it, but I figured I had nothing to lose.”

Through an agreement with an event company that sponsors certain star-studded occasions, such as the American Music Awards (AMAs) and the Grammys, the client receives a select number of invitations to these events each year. They’re then able to extend the opportunity to invitees of their choosing, and they wanted to make a splash this year with impressive items.

Kramer immediately got in touch with his business partner, who knew exactly where to turn: Record Remix (asi/93934) in Philadelphia, which specializes in making promotional products out of old records. When Kramer called the client back the next day with the good news, “they were beside themselves,” he says. They told Kramer they had tried to do a similar project for the 2018 AMAs and couldn’t find anyone to do it. “We actually took the time to source it for them,” says Kramer.

Kramer and his team ordered 50 vinyl records from Record Remix, a portion of which they drop-shipped to individual invitees. They’re authentic seven-inch 45s that feature the client’s artwork on the cover and at the center of the record, and, with a record player handy, actually play music.

In addition to the records, LMS put together two additional items as part of the project: branded opera glasses for use during the Grammys, and branded JBL headphones as a room gift that awaited guests when they came back from the event, nestled in black gift boxes with branded tissue paper.

Of course, LMS had to address unforeseen challenges along the way. They had finished up the opera glasses when the client said they needed to find out if the guests would actually be allowed to bring them into the event. “They confirmed they’d be able to,” says Kramer, “but it took an extra couple days to do that.”

The headphones posed another dilemma. The client’s artwork is black and blue, and the gift boxes are black. The client wanted clear custom labels for the boxes, which meant they’d need to be printed in white instead of black.

“It was hard to find a vendor that would print in white for a relatively small order,” says Kramer. “We were able to make it happen, but we ate the cost on that for the client’s benefit. It wasn’t something we could just find at Office Depot. It was an additional complexity, but the client has no idea what we did for them on that and they don’t need to know. That’s customer service, and it’s why they’re coming back to us for other projects.”

Indeed, the client has already placed another order with LMS Brandz, and plans to continue working with them this year. “It’s cool that a new client came to us for their first order with this kind of big custom project,” says Kramer. “It started with the invitation, but then it expanded to the opera glasses and headphones. We plan to work with them for the AMAs this year and next year’s Grammys.”