Looking for a New Revenue Stream? Don't Overlook Promotional and Personalized Products Market

Marco Boer

Looking for new, high-margin sales opportunities for promotional and personalized products — some of which you may or may not produce yourself? Marco Boer, noted VP at I.T. Strategies and conference chair of the Inkjet Summit and other industry events, has authored a highly informative white paper called "The Surprisingly Large Promotional and Personalized Goods Printing Market."

In it, Boer writes, "The promotional goods market and its associated print requirement has run under the radar of the printing industry due to its high fragmentation of product, print technology, and distribution channels. It is a market that has been surprisingly difficult to disrupt from a distribution perspective, despite attempts by on-line print providers, due to the high-degree of hand holding by print providers to small, local businesses."

Boer values the promotional goods market in the U.S. to be worth approximately $19 billion in retail sales and the personalized products market to be valued at about $2 billion. So, in essence, it presents a huge sales and product line opportunity for printing companies, both large and small, to offer their clientele on a local level. And, it's a market that isn't dominated by VistaPrint or other online-only print providers. According to Boer, online providers only control about 20% of the market.

And, from a technology standpoint, inkjet printing is opening up a wide range of production opportunities. "Many of the smaller retailers gravitate towards dye sublimation printing technology, and those that grow sufficiently and can cross the return-on-investment hurdle often end up adding UV-curable inkjet printing technology to their fleet of equipment for higher productivity," Boer reveals.

Boer's report is well worth reading; it's not one of those "white papers" that sometimes reads more as a veiled promotion for the paper's sponsor. It clearly identifies opportunities and describes the pros and cons of various print technology options. You can download it by clicking here.