U.S. Promotional Products Sales Decline in 2009 â Still Fare ... - PPAI

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPromotional products comprise useful and/or decorative articles of merchandise that are used inmarketing and communication programs. The items include wearables, writing instruments,calendars, drinkware and many other items, usually imprinted with a company’s name, logo ormessage. Premiums, incentives, advertising specialties, business gifts, awards andcommemoratives are also considered promotional products. Promotional products are used inboth marketing and non-marketing (e.g., employee motivation) contexts.Brief Overview. Distributor sales of promotional products in the U.S. declined 13.61 percentfrom 2008 to $15,638,571,468. The lowest since 2002, the sales volume total is a directreflection of the tough economy that affected advertising media across the board in 2009. Theyear saw decreases in revenue for both large and small distributor companies. Larger companieswith sales of $2.5 million or more experienced a smaller decrease of 2.35% over 2008 whilesmaller companies saw a huge decrease of 22.62%. This year also showed very noticeablechanges in the number of companies in the industry that report promotional product sales.Smaller companies with sales less than $2.5 million decreased from 21,500 last year to 21,150this year. In contrast, larger companies with sales of $2.5 million or more increased from 830 to857 in number in 2009. This increase in a count of larger companies is partly due to reporting bycompanies who were previously primarily in the printing, forms, packaging, health supplyindustries (i.e., dental, eye care, medical and veterinary supply) that now report significant salesin promotional products. The total number of distributor companies counted this year was 22,007as opposed to 22,330 last year.Comparisons to Other Media. A 13.6-percent sales drop isn’t good, but it looks pretty goodcompared to other media. According to our study, other media that saw considerable losses wereprint advertising, with newspapers losing 28.6 percent in advertising sales and consumermagazine ad revenue dropping 18.1 percent. Billboard sales also dropped 15.6 percent last yearand internet advertising, which had been growing in double digits in recent years, was down 3.4percent. The biggest surprise was a 15.6-percent drop in sales for direct mail, which hadn’t had aloss in modern times until now. The fact that all media suffered in 2009 doesn’t make it better,4
ut at least we know that the promotional products industry’s sales decline wasn’t an anomaly.Simply put, providing answers to the weaknesses of competitors (or competing media) is goodstrategy for recovery in an economy that many believe will be slow to recapture lost ground.Projections for 2010. Distributers say they are cautiously optimistic about 2010. In fact, morethan 60 percent of those surveyed predicted that 2010 would be a better year, while only 14percent felt it might be worse. An upswing in this year’s first quarter sales reported by industryfirms seems to be carrying over into the next quarter.5
Page 1 and 2: PREPARED FOR PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS A
Page 3: The annual study was conducted excl
Page 7: IntroductionHeading into 2009, few
Page 10 and 11: collectively produced sales of $7,7
Page 12 and 13: Orders Placed with Outside Supplier
Page 14 and 15: Comparison to Other MediaAs we note
Page 16 and 17: when nearly a third of news executi
Page 18 and 19: compete for. But we’d get nothing
Page 21 and 22: and that is quite the opposite of t
Page 23 and 24: Veronis Suhler Stevenson (2009, Aug
Page 25 and 26: Those surveyed were given the follo

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U.S. Promotional Products Sales Decline in 2009 â Still Fare ... - PPAI