OnFulfillment Blog | Riley's Picks (3)

Branded apparel is tremendously popular amongst our customers.  It’s the go-to gift for employees, partners, customers, event attendees—just about anyone they will interact with.  Whether it’s a brand-name polo shirt or a baseball cap, a high-end jacket or a t-shirt, branded apparel is a great way to advertise the brand while letting the recipient know they are valued.

Picking the right item for the occasion is fairly easy for our customers; they usually know exactly what they are looking for.  Selecting the right material or fabric, though, is a bit more difficult.  There are so many options that understanding the differences between them requires a fair amount of knowledge. It’s not uncommon for customers to be delighted with their selection but disappointed in the material they chose.

Events are enjoying a resurgence. That means companies are looking for branded promotional items that help them make an impression without breaking the bank.

The success of any event giveaway is measured by impressions—that is, the number of people who see the product and logo over the item’s lifetime. The size of the event (and potential audience) must be carefully weighed against the quality of the item and the available budget in order to make a lasting and favorable impression. The price of each item should be directly related to the amount of business they are expected to generate from the attendees.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring recent trends that are influencing how businesses are spending their marketing budgets these days, first introduced in a blog post on the PPAI Expo back in January. Those trends include an industry-wide move towards more conscious consumerism as well as a growing preference for buying promotional items based on well-known retail brands.

A recent blog post highlighted various trends that are influencing how businesses are currently spending their budgets.

We detailed one of those trends, conscious consumerism, in late February. With this post, we are examining a second: a preference by customers for well-known retail brands when it comes to branded promotional items.

PPAI Expo 2023, held in early January in Las Vegas, attracted the country’s biggest promotional product providers and distributors to showcase what’s in store for the coming year—everything from new products and apparel to event material and order programs.

As with the previous few years, 2023 includes a host of uncertainties that will impact this year’s buying habits. Post-pandemic behavior continues to influence decision making, forcing companies to be cautious about spending. Couple that with an increasingly fragile economy and it’s clear that budgets will suffer.