The Top-Selling Products and Programs of 2009


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The Top-Selling Products and Programs of 2009
By: Saritha Kuruvilla
Issue: 2010jul

For more than 30 years PPAI has been compiling and reporting annual product and program category sales stats for the promotional products industry. With the financial crisis and recession carving out a chunk of everybody’s spending last year, it’s important to see where buyers spent their money and what products they purchased.

Our annual research tracks 21 different product segments and 14 different program categories. With industry dollars declining significantly last year, each of the product segments naturally took a big hit in terms of dollars. However the total proportion of the different product categories remained somewhat unchanged from 2008.

Top-Selling Products

Other Top Product Categories
The “games” segment saw a significant increase in 2009 with 3.24-percent share of the market as opposed to 2.44 percent in 2008. House wares as a segment also grew in share to 3.22 percent of the market as opposed to 2.6 percent in 2008. Other segments that grew marginally were computer products and accessories, textiles, food and clocks and watches. The automotive segment dropped again from 1.85 percent in 2008 to 1.53 percent in 2009 making it one of the smallest segments next to personal/pocket-purse products. This comes as no surprise as the automotive industry was hit hard with the downturn.

Top-Selling Programs
PPAI research also examined how promotional products are used in the marketplace. Determining which categories are best sellers is one thing, but to determine which programs the products are used for is equally important.

Results indicate that in 2009, buyers of promotional products spent the most on “Brand Awareness.” In a down economy, it is no surprise that companies focused on creating brand awareness, which was the largest slice of the pie with 12.95-percent share of the market in 2009.

Tradeshows retained its second place with an 11.83 percent share up from 11.43-percent in 2008. Buyers no doubt focused their efforts on getting new customers. As a result, the segment that saw a large increase this year was “New Customer/Account Generation,” which grew from 8.22 percent in ’08 to 10.89 percent last year. When times are tough, most companies tend to cut back on costs they can control. Employee Relations and Events, which was the second-largest segment in ’08 with an 11.87-percent share dropped to a mere 8.73 percent in ’09.

Internal Promotions which also emphasize employee-related incentives such as programs for attendance improvement, error reductions and similar efforts also dropped significantly from 5.01 percent share of the market in ’08 to 3.80 percent last year.

Other areas experiencing declines were New Product/ Service Introduction, Safety Education/incentives and Public Relations.

WEIGHT FOR 2009
50.26% for companies with $2.5 million or more in sales
49.75% for companies with less than $2.5 million in sales

Saritha Kuruvilla is PPAI’s manager of research. Reach her at SarithaK@ppai.org.

Comments (1)

7/20/2010
James Goldfinger (james@canadasportswear.com)
company: Canada Sportswear
title: Category Manager
"based on each category is there a further breakdown on what types of product make up each particular category based on percentages and dollars Example( Category: Bags types: computer, back pack, sports bag ) Please let mek now"

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