Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), Irving, Texas, and Promotional Products Association Of The Mid-South (PPAMS), Nashville, kicked off Promotional Products Work! Week on Friday, May 11, 2018 in Shelbyville, Tenn., also known as “The Pencil City.”
Billed as the official kickoff for the national awareness event, happening this week, the event is organized by PPAMS, PPAI and the Shelbyville-Bedford County Chamber of Commerce. Local, state and national leaders gathered in Shelbyville for a factory tour, luncheon and official ribbon cutting to kick off Promotional Products Work! Week.
Thousands of promotional products businesses around the country will join in the celebration by hosting special events, partnering with local businesses and volunteering at and donating to neighborhood nonprofits and schools.
“PPAI is honored to join with PPAMS to kick off the sixth annual Promotional Products Work! Week in ‘The Pencil City,’” said Paul Bellantone, CAE, PPAI president and CEO. “We applaud Shelbyville’s rich history, and salute all of the promotional products pioneers and companies in cities all over America.”
For almost a century, Shelbyville was the hub of wood-cased pencil manufacturing in the U.S. In 1991, the world’s longest pencil was produced in Shelbyville. Although only one pencil manufacturer remains, the city of 21,000 people is still home to familiar names in writing instruments: Goldstar, Musgrave, Sanford and Shelbyville Pencil.
The $23.3 billion promotional products industry, with its more than 40,500 businesses—96 percent of which are small businesses—and more than 500,000 professionals, will work to create awareness for the value promotional products deliver to advertisers and marketers, as well as the positive impact promotional products businesses have on the U.S. economy, job creation and community enrichment.
In Tennessee, 828 promotional products companies employ 11,385 people. An astonishing 98 percent of those companies are small businesses. Resellers are responsible for $295.4 million in sales revenue each year, while manufacturers sell $78.7 million from the Volunteer State.
For more information on PPAI, visit www.ppai.org.
