With more and more companies using and producing great promotional merchandise, it began to become hard to stand out. Companies found it essential to be the ones with the most innovative promotional tools. This movement lead to a whole new niche in the market which was the need for promotional merchandise suppliers. Companies would no longer produce the merchandise themselves, they would go to these companies and give a list of what they want, and then it was on the shoulders of the promotional merchandise traders to make, source and brand the desired items.
The number of suppliers kept growing and in 1904 12 manufacturers of promotional merchandise decided to unite and formed the first the first trade association in the industry. This establishment carried on growing into the organisation now known as the Promotional Products Association National.
It was only during the late 1950’s that promotional merchandise first emerged amongst the companies in the UK and Ireland. People would be given occasional gifts from their companies as a good will or a congratulations gesture. It was during this time period that the two main bodies of UK promotional merchandise were founded. The first Promota founded in 1958, and the second the British Promotional Merchandise Association.
An explosion of promotional merchandise occurred in 1970’s UK, Companies were recognising the great benefits that incorporating a promotional merchandise strategy had. It showed them how to build a corporate identity and introduce brand strengthening. The range of promotional merchandise at this time was still quite limited, which led to the famous promotional product catalogue being launched in the 1980’s. With this useful tool companies could search through pages of items selecting those they want and how they want to brand them.
The 1990’s saw the creation of catalogue groups. These groups offered people in the local geographical locations unique catalogue distribution. Being a member of these catalogue groups had their benefits, not only did you have access to these unique promotional products that couldn’t be seen elsewhere but being a member improved your networking with other companies, and gave you better buying terms.
The early 00’s saw the influx of use companies setting up websites for their promotional product business and by 2008 almost all promotional merchandise companies were set up online. With the recession in the late 00’s the promotional product industry took a slight dip in turnover, but has since recovered and is now worth almost a billion pounds in the UK alone.