Yesterday, we took to the show floor for the first day of PPAI Expo East in Atlantic City. Though the show floor covers less ground than its Vegas counterpart, there's plenty to see from a variety of suppliers. These shows are always a great way to gauge what trends are developing in the promotional space,…
Sean Norris
On the first day of exhibits at PPAI Expo 2019, a crowd had gathered in front of the Compass Industries booth. The show floor had opened a few hours before, and the early rush had dispersed into a modest flow of traffic that would build slowly to peak capacity later in the day. Yet here was a throng of people gathered around a small tub full of water, elbowing their way in to get a look...
These days, automation is the name of the game in sales and marketing. Overall, that’s been a good thing. But it’s also made everything so dang impersonal. Sometimes, to really connect in the digital age, you’ve got to ditch the screens, hop in a tricked out Mini Cooper and go on an East Coast tour to visit customers. Wait, what?...
Guys, we have an urgent breaking news announcement: Yogurt is ... cool now? That's if Chobani's latest promotion is any indication, at least. In support of Chobani Gimmies, its new product line for kids, the yogurt brand launched a multi-channel marketing campaign that centered on a branded merch giveaway...
Hit Promotional Products, relatively speaking, is new to apparel. A giant in the hard-goods space, the Largo, Florida-based supplier topped $397 million in 2017 revenue, but began offering apparel only three years ago. As it looked to scale its soft-goods business, it knew it needed a pro...
Cimpress released its second-quarter earnings report yesterday, and it's a doozy. In a surprising move, the company will part with Vistaprint CEO Trynka Shineman after Vistaprint posted revenue growth of just 1 percent, while overall Cimpress revenue grew 8 percent, down from 32 percent in the second quarter of 2018. Robert Keane, Cimpress CEO, will serve as interim CEO for Vistaprint while the company looks for a replacement...
The promo industry has come a long way from the days of cheap giveaways, the proverbial "trinkets and trash." The best companies have put the focus on value, quality and responsible sourcing, helping the industry to a record-breaking $23.3 billion in 2017 revenue. So why can't it shake the nagging perception that it sells mostly cheap swag—and why does it matter?...
It was 2010, and Delta Marketing Group was at a crossroads. As the recession bottomed out, the company lost its top three clients. To survive, it would have to reinvent itself as more than just a promotional products seller. For Cathy Houston, vice president for Delta Marketing Group, that meant one thing...
How's a small or independent distributor supposed to compete with Amazon and the mega online promo distributors? It's a question we hear a lot, especially as those large distributors grab more and more of the market share. But there might be a simple answer: Don't even try...
At the G-20 summit in Argentina, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement that will put a temporary hold on U.S. plans to increase tariffs on Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent. The two countries will have 90 days from Jan. 1, 2019, to negotiate a long-term agreement...
The World Series is over, with the Boston Red Sox cruising to a 4-1 series win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. But, honestly, who cares, because we need to talk about the digital vending machines Adidas used to dispense piles of branded World Series merchandise and promote a new line of shoes...
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed taking a (presumably) tongue-in-cheek shot at Major League Baseball's playoff hoodies. These are the ones—adorned with each team's postseason slogan and logo and various MLB branding—that players wear in the dugout, because October baseball is a frigid, hellish nightmare that serves only to remind us…
If things were looking good for distributors in 2017, they were even better for promotional products suppliers. While our Top 50 distributors totaled just over $5 billion in promotional products sales last year, the 2018 Top 50 Suppliers totaled $5.3 billion, besting their $4.6 billion 2016 total by a full $690 million (a 14.9 percent increase)...
Have you ever seen "The Town," the 2010 crime thriller that's set in Boston and ends in a climactic action sequence at Fenway Park? Well, strap in, because this story from the Boston Globe is like the real-life version of that, except it's about a promotional banner and it involves significantly less Ben Affleck...
Amazon Business, the e-commerce titan's B2B marketplace for everything from staplers to suspenders, launched in 2015, replacing a previous iteration of the service known as Amazon Supply. That first year, Amazon Business generated a tidy $1 billion in sales. Just three years later, it's already set to top $10 billion...
