Key takeaways:
• Hard goods are a strategic expansion for apparel decorators
• Functionality in popular promo items is becoming the new premium
• Decoration technology is opening new revenue opportunities
Apparel and headwear make up about 47% of the promotional products market. The other half of the industry consists of what have traditionally been known as hard goods — encompassing everything from drinkware to tech items to writing instruments to magnets.
For apparel decorators looking to diversify, branching out into hard goods is a smart move, whether it means pairing name-brand drinkware with an embroidered quarter-zip in a new hire kit or adding name badges and lanyards to an employee uniforming program. Or maybe diversifying into stickers and mugs to add onto the T-shirts you already screen print for your local coffee shop to sell to their loyal customers.
Consider that all five promo categories with the most growth from 2024 to 2025 were hard goods, according to ASI Research. And three of the four high-growth search terms in ASI’s flagship product sourcing platform ESP were “Owala,” “fans,” and “fidgets.”
Here are three trends to watch in the hard goods space.
Trend No. 1: Searches for Fans Heat Up
Fans have long been a popular promo item, especially in the sweltering summer months, but suppliers are finding new ways to incorporate different technology to create more effective products.
“This trend’s been going on for some period of time. It’s not new,” says Dan Oas, CEO of Irwindale, CA-based supplier High Caliber Line. “We’ve just seen a bigger proliferation of them.”
Read the full article on Apparelist, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
