When considering which products best represent your brand at trade shows, customer meetings, recruiting events, and all manner of marketing engagement, it’s important to start with those core items that will serve as the staples for your merchandise program.  Whether that program is a professionally managed on-line e-commerce catalog, or it’s simply a pre-determined line of merchandise that the procurement department has vetted and approved for purchase, those products should reflect both the brand and the audience.

While sifting through the seemingly endless choices of products available in the promotional merchandise industry, there are are 3 key principles to follow:

1. Identify the market that will receive your products
2. Understand the audience
3. Select what the audience wants, not what you personally like

Once the core items are in place, they should represent 80% of the product movement.  From there, keep the program fresh with expanded offerings of a core item, seasonal styles and creative graphics for those favorite tees. “Core” doesn’t have to mean “stagnant”, it simply represents a tightly focused selection of product categories that will speak to your brand messengers.

Concentrate on your core, and the merchandise that carries your logo will communicate the story you want told!