OnTrend: Customized Branded Merchandise Recommendations

As a marketer, you know that the branded promotional merchandise industry is large and growing.

Not only that, but the industry itself is changing.  This evolution presents customers like you with an almost unmanageable number of choices, leading to a new operational challenge: how to navigate the increasingly complex landscape without making it a full-time job.

OnFulfillment’s solution is a new service called OnTrend, designed to simplify and streamline the branded promotional merchandise purchasing process for our customers.  Using historical data analysis and assisted by artificial intelligence, OnTrend applies a personalized filter to all the available options to help you zero in on the items that meet your unique needs and budget.  Your team no longer has to waste valuable time combing through myriad catalogs and web page—OnTrend makes it all quick and easy.

The Branded Promotional Merchandise Industry Is Growing

How big is the branded promotional merchandise industry, exactly?  The answer, it turns out, depends on the source. 

Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), a global organization that advocates for the promotional and branded merchandise industry, says the U.S. market was approximately $27.1 billion in 2025, up 1.3% from the previous year. 

Using a slightly different methodology, the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), a private company that provides business tools, marketing databases, and research for the promo industry, reports a slightly higher $27.7 billion for 2025, a 4.2% growth over 2024. 

However, there is evidence that this $27 billion number dramatically understates the branded-merchandise economy.  According to a September 2026 study commissioned by PPAI and conducted by Oxford Economics, the broader U.S. promotional-products market was closer to $50 billion in 2025 when including purchases that didn't necessarily flow through traditional distributors—for instance, direct manufacturers, third-party e-commerce sites, artisan producers, in-house decoration, and other channels. 

Whatever the true number, this growth is demonstrably changing buyer expectations. Merchandise is becoming more of a marketing asset rather than a simple giveaway.  Rather than asking “How cheaply can we put our logo on something?”, companies are instead asking, "What kind of branded experience are we creating?"

Quality expectations are also going up.  Consumers today are less willing to keep something just because it has a logo on it.  As a result, marketers are deciding that rather than buying 10,000 inexpensive pens as giveaways, they might get more value by purchasing fewer, higher-quality, more useful items.

Finally, personalization is becoming much more important to consumers, especially technology and B2B companies.  Not surprisingly, PPAI found that 48% of respondents said a personalized promotional item was more memorable. 

The Challenge

This shift is creating an operational problem for marketing departments.  As merchandise becomes more sophisticated, the number of SKUs increases dramatically.  If left unchecked, and without the appropriate operational infrastructure, the marketing team could quickly become an inventory management department.

This is where portal-based marketing fulfillment software, backed by an experienced partner, is particularly useful.  A single system for ordering and managing physical marketing assets enables promotional merchandise to become a component of the larger marketing supply chain.

A software-based portal also provides the necessary visibility into inventory for easy and efficient asset management.  As companies spend more on branded merchandise and the number of items increases, the cost of poor inventory management grows as well.

The visibility afforded by a software-based portal allows users to know what they are holding, where the items are, and how much they cost. Shipping is easily scheduled.  Best of all, the software provides important data that tells users what they and their teams are consuming, which items are moving (and which are not), and when to reorder.

The bottom line: real-time inventory, reporting, event workflows, and integrated ordering portals become more valuable as merchandise programs scale.

OnTrend: Helping You Find the Right Promotional Merchandise

As the amount and quality of branded promotional merchandise increases, one challenge remains: how to navigate the growing number of choices and find just the right items for each campaign, event, and kit.

Enter OnTrend, a custom program designed to keep customers up to date on the latest, greatest, and hottest trends in branded promotional merchandise.  By working closely with the top suppliers in the industry, the OnFulfillment team knows what’s currently available, what’s coming, and what’s popular.  Through OnTrend, customers will be able to take advantage of these relationships to stay ahead of the competition and remain in front of the promotional swag curve.

Initially, OnTrend will be a quarterly distribution, inspiring existing customers with creative ideas and higher-quality products that their consumers will actually use for their upcoming events, onboarding kits, recognition programs, and more.  OnTrend’s distribution frequency will increase as needed—for instance, to share special promotional offers from suppliers or to capitalize on a fast-emerging trend.

Better yet, as the program matures, OnTrend will use analytics gleaned from customer portals to produce more personalized and curated offers for recipients.  Over time, through a combination of manual examination and AI assistance, OnTrend will be able to analyze individual account data to learn what products are—and aren’t¬—selling, current inventory levels, and overall consumption rates to inform future purchasing decisions.  

Armed with this data, OnTrend will be able to produce customized catalogs tailored to individual customers based on their historical behavior and future requirements.  Not only does this save time by recommending only merchandise that the customer is likely to be interested in, but it also helps them maximize their budgets by suggesting quantities and timelines that match previous activity or anticipates the potential demands of scheduled upcoming events.

While customers will have the ability to purchase products currently in inventory via their portal, they can also work through their customer service representatives or account managers as they have in the past.  In fact, OnFulfillment is currently building up its internal team, focusing on utilizing AI to produce carefully curated solutions for individual customers.

Changing the Way Branded Merchandise is Purchased

OnTrend promises to revolutionize the branded promotional merchandise procurement experience for OnFulfillment customers.  By making the process part of an integrated marketing infrastructure, OnTrend will streamline the acquisition of branded swag while ensuring budgets are respected and inventory is carefully management.

This revolutionary approach will have very interesting consequences for customers who take advantage of the service.  The objective will shift from simply stocking large quantities of inexpensive giveaways to cover anticipated needs to implementing and managing a more sophisticated program that ensures the right high-quality items, in the right quantities, are available when needed—and without adding any more people to the marketing organization.

Interested in learning more about OnTrend, or how OnFulfillment can satisfy your marketing fulfillment needs while freeing you up to focus on more strategic, revenue-generating activities? Visit the contact us page and complete the form to request a meeting.