AltOps
Clients, banks and boards ask for numbers. Most of the numbers that get passed around in promo are either marketing figures or real figures quoted wrong. This is the short list from the last month: what each number actually measures, and the page it came from.
How big is the industry?
PPAI hired a research firm, Oxford Economics, to measure branded merchandise worldwide. The headline number is $472.3 billion. Be careful with it. That figure is not sales. It is an estimate of all the economic activity the industry supports, including suppliers' suppliers and the spending of people the industry employs. It is built with a multiplier of 2.95. If you tell a client the industry is worth $472 billion, and they look it up, you lose the argument. PPAI's explanation of the study and the announcement have the detail.
The numbers that are actually spending, and safe to quote:
- $338.3 billion was spent on branded merchandise worldwide in 2025.
- Of that, $229.7 billion was licensed merchandise (think sports jerseys and character products) and $108.6 billion was promotional products.
- $174 billion was spent in the United States, about half the world total: $124 billion licensed and $50 billion promotional products.
- US promo spending is about 13% of all US advertising spending.
- The study also says the industry supports 11.9 million jobs worldwide and pays $141.3 billion in taxes.
How to use them: the 13% figure is for a marketing director who treats merch as leftover budget. The $50 billion figure is for a client who thinks promo is small. Leave the $472 billion figure alone.
The best Q4 product statistic
76% of people say they would look at a promotional calendar at least once a week, and 50% would keep a custom calendar if they liked how it looked. Both come from ASI's 2026 Ad Impressions study, quoted in ASI's calendar guide. It is the cheapest "views per dollar" argument you have for a year-end program.
Cost per impression
ASI's 2026 study of nearly 5,000 consumers says a promotional product delivers a brand impression for $0.006, six-tenths of a cent, and that 85% of people remember the company that gave them a logoed item. ASI's release is from May, but it is the source for the figure everyone quoted this month.
How much work runs through one platform
commonsku, a software platform many distributors use, says more than 1 million purchase orders went through it in 2025 alone, compared with 2.7 million in its whole first ten years. It also says 950-plus distributor companies use it and that yearly volume is "closing in on $2 billion". All of this is commonsku's own reporting, not audited, and the company does not define "volume". The purchase-order count is the more reliable number.
The companies
- SanMar, the largest apparel supplier: $4.1 billion in 2026 North American promo revenue, per ASI.
- Boundless, a distributor: $149 million in 2025, No. 19 on Counselor's Top 40 list, per ASI.
- Logomark, a hard-goods supplier: nearly $120 million in 2025, per GRAPHICS PRO.
- SRG, a supplier: $72.6 million in 2025, No. 24 on Counselor's supplier list, per ASI.
- Thumbprint, a distributor: "almost $40 million" this year, growing about 20% a year, with $100 million "possibly within three years". Those words are the host's, said on commonsku's podcast, not audited numbers.
Movie merch got small
Studio merchandise orders that used to run 30,000 to a million pieces now top out around 5,000, says Jeanie Chung of Chung Marketing in ASI's feature on movie promotions. US box office through August was $7 billion, up 20% from last year and 7% below 2019. Films leave theaters faster now, about 45 days instead of 90, and studios want promo items in about two weeks.
The costs behind the next price increase
These are not promo numbers, but they explain why your supplier's next price list looks the way it does.
| Figure | What it is | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5.4% | How much prices charged by US producers rose in the year to August; goods prices rose 1.1% in August alone | BLS |
| +24.1% | Rise in the producer price of diesel fuel in August | BLS |
| $6.285 a gallon | US diesel price, week of September 14, up $2.55 on a year ago and a record | EIA |
| 83.09 cents a pound | Average US cotton price, week ending September 3, against 61.95 cents a year earlier | USDA via IndexBox |
| $4,500 | Cost to ship one 40-foot container, world average, September 17; Shanghai to New York is $10,394 | Drewry |
| $0.75 | UPS extra fee per residential ground package, November 22 to December 26, up from $0.60 | Value Added Resource |
| $1.70 to $9.35 | FedEx holiday fee per residential package, depending on your shipping volume | Lojistic |
| 3.75% to 4% | The Fed's interest rate after the September 16 rise | Federal Reserve |
| 50% | Extra tariff on many Canadian goods including apparel since August 22 | PPAI |
One number that goes the other way. Earlier this year the Supreme Court struck down a set of tariffs imposed under an emergency-powers law, IEEPA. Importers who paid them can claim refunds. By September 11, US Customs had accepted about $134.7 billion in claims, per Supply Chain Dive. If your suppliers paid those tariffs in 2025, ask whether any refund reaches your price.
The league tables
From Counselor's 2026 Top 40 lists, based on 2025 North American promo revenue. Distributors and suppliers.
| Company | 2025 revenue | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 4imprint (No. 1 distributor) | $1,321.5M | -1.6% |
| HALO (No. 2 distributor) | $964.4M | 0.0% |
| BDA (No. 6 distributor) | $551.8M | +17.3% |
| Cimpress (No. 10 distributor) | $350.9M | +7.5% |
| SanMar (No. 1 supplier) | $4,100M | +7.9% |
| S&S Activewear (No. 2 supplier) | $3,500M | -2.8% |
| Gildan (No. 3 supplier) | $901.6M | +15.0% |
What it says: the biggest distributor shrank. Sports and entertainment merch (BDA) grew fastest. The two big apparel suppliers went in opposite directions. The whole industry grew 2.5% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, per Counselor, which is barely more than inflation.
Two mid-year updates from public companies: 4imprint's first-half revenue was $666.4 million, up 1%, with fewer orders but a higher average order and a lower profit margin because of tariffs, per ASI. Stran's quarterly revenue was $33.4 million, up 2.4%, per its earnings call.
A rule for all of the above: quote the number, quote the source, and say what it measures. If a number cannot be traced, it does not go here.
