What's Your Biggest Business Threat?

We're beginning to craft the editorial content for the next QCAConnect, coming out in March. I hope you have enjoyed our supplements to Promo Marketing so far—but if you haven't yet had the opportunity to check it out, here's a link to the winter edition of QCAConnect. It's chock full of valuable information for your business and definitely worth the read, if I do say so myself.

One of the luxuries I have at Quality Certification Alliance is access to the principals of some of the industry's top suppliers and distributors. While working on my article, I reached out to 30 key executives and asked them, "If you had to pick just one, what factor would you say represents the promotional products industry's biggest challenge to long-term growth?" The industry certainly has shown some healthy indicators of late, but there are some major changes waiting in the wings.

I wondered if the concerns would revolve around increased governmental regulations, or the breakdown of the traditional supply chain. Was it the migration of ad spend from promotional products to other platforms, like digital? How about the significant effect Millennials will have in purchasing habits as they become larger influences in the U.S. work force? There were more responses than I had room for in QCAConnect, so I thought I'd share some of them here.

David Nicholson, president at Polyconcept North America, pointed to the rise of the Millennials, calling it the "silent, but significant demographic shift occurring in the U.S. workforce. This 'Generation Y' has a far different view of the world and will represent 50 percent of the B2B workforce in 2015. They are digital natives with an approach to business relationships, expectations of their employers, loyalty to brands and purchasing criteria (to name a few), that is a marked shift from prior generations." What are the implications? Nicholson went on to explain.