Market Insights: The Growth of Promotional Products

The promotional products and merchandise industry is undergoing significant transformations. With shifting consumer preferences, increased competition, and advancements in technology, businesses must adapt to stay competitive. Let’s explore the key factors driving growth and change in this dynamic market, and let’s dive into HelloPrint’s approach on the category.

Growth in the Online Market

The promotional products and merchandise industry has seen a remarkable shift towards online ordering in recent years. The rise of e-commerce has made it easier for businesses of all sizes, including SMEs, to access and purchase promotional items.

Traditionally, larger companies (from 50-100 FTE) were the buyers in the promotional product space due to their size and stronger needs to differentiate towards clients and employees versus competition. However, with more orders now being processed online, the market has become much more accessible. Smaller businesses can easily browse, customize, and order products through user-friendly platforms, leveling the playing field.

This growth in the online market has led to a more diverse range of products being available, from standard promotional items like pens and mugs to more unique and specialized merchandise. The convenience and accessibility of online platforms are driving increased order volumes and allowing companies to reach new customer segments.

More Demand for Higher Quality and Sustainable Products

As consumer awareness around sustainability grows, so does the demand for higher-quality, environmentally friendly promotional products. Customers are no longer satisfied with generic, low-cost items; they are seeking special business gifts that reflect their values and enhance their brand image.

This shift is driven by several factors:

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Companies are increasingly focusing on CSR, seeking products that align with their sustainability goals. As a result, there is a growing preference for items made from recycled, biodegradable, or ethically sourced materials.
• Brand Image: High-quality, sustainable products are viewed as a reflection of a company’s commitment to quality and environmental responsibility. Businesses are willing to invest in more premium items to make a positive impression on their clients and stakeholders.

To meet these demands, HelloPrint is expanding their offerings to include eco-friendly materials, such as bamboo, recycled plastics, and organic cotton. 90% of the 1500 newly added promotional products in Q2 and Q3 are sustainable products for HelloPrint, which helps in itself making the category much more sustainable. But at the same time, we are switching full sub categories to be fully eco. After running tests on X, Y and X, and actually seeing more sales with a fully eco range, we have built confidence that this is the way to go. The short term target: 80% of our sales in promotional products to be sustainable by December 2024.

More Competition in the Market from Traditional Paper Players

The opportunities in the promotional products market draw the attention of traditional paper print parties. With declining volumes in especially the larger offset runs of paper print, these companies are looking for alternative product categories to keep up with their growth. They already have established customer databases that buy personalized products, which in theory should make it easy to also sell other categories.

The reality is a little less simple though. Often systems of paper print parties are optimized to handle enormous amounts of product configurations for products like flyers and booklets. To offer a strong proposition of promotional products, there is a need to upload less complex products, but a very high quantity of those products. Instead of 50 products with millions of combinations, there is a need for thousands of relatively simple products. 

Also the user experience is quite a bit different for promotional versus paper products. Paper products are often optimized to quickly configure your options and easily switch between variables to see the effects on pricing and delivery times. For promotional products, and also merchandise, there is a mich stronger need for product selection: let the customer search for, filter and find the product that they like. Because for products like pens or umbrellas, the appearance of the product in combination with price and delivery time, is often the deciding factor in ordering a product. Next to that, there is a huge need from customer to easily upload their logo, and visualize and edit that on the products.

HelloPrint’s Approach on the Promotional Products Market

Since 2020, HelloPrint has been investing in better technology for their promotional products and merchandise. By investing for years in the product information systems, pricing models and automation of product onboarding, HelloPrint has now a range of 2000 optimized logo products live. Spread out over 15 subcategories, and sources by the best European suppliers.

At the same time, HelloPrint has been investing strongly in the user experience to improve the conversion of the products. We have developed our own search and filter technology that let customers easily select the products they like. After dozens of A/B tests, the current version of the pages is highly converting and driving customer satisfaction in usability. Since the beginning of 2024, HelloPrint started as on of the first testing partners of FastEditor’s new editor software for promotional products. This is accelerating conversion rates to a further level, and automates the process in getting print-ready files, making the full flow automated.

These investments have resulted in strong growth numbers for HelloPrint. Sales numbers are up 120% versus last year, and the category is on its run rate for 15 million euros in yearly sales. If growth continued, it is expected that promotional products are the 2nd category at the end of 2024 and the biggest category in 2025.

Full Service Solution to get a Head Start in Logo Products

To help its partners, HelloPrint is now offering access to its optimized promotional product offering to its partners. You can tap in directly in the product systems, make use of the best pricing agreements and start testing and selling the category to your customers.

– Get access to 2000 promotional and merchandise products
– Best prices in the market, guaranteed
– Integrate the products via our API in your website, or we can create a fully branded shop for you) including search and filter pages)
– Including connection to FastEditor’s Logo Editor
– Overview of best practices on how to sell to your customers

There are limited spots available for this solution, and the first partners that will reach out will be prioritized. Are you interested in getting a kickstart in selling promotional products to your customers? Send me an email on [email protected]. 

Rick Molenaar
Chief Marketing Officer
HelloPrint