skucamp Montréal: The Souvenirs We Brought Home

For years, the same question followed skucamp from Palm Springs to Scottsdale: when are we going international?

This September, we said oui.

Montréal was definitely worth the wait. For four days at Hôtel William Gray in the old city, distributors and suppliers traded ideas over strong espresso, long dinners and a respectable number of bagels.

Before anyone arrived, Aly Anderson and the team gave this year's merch kit one brief: every piece should feel like a souvenir you'd have collected on a day well spent in the Old Port. Turns out the people on stage had the same brief in mind. These are the five ideas we're still carrying around.

(Well, almost every piece of the kit made it home. Customs loved the SanMar crewnecks so much they kept them. We'll get there.)

Bienvenue, skucampers

David Shultz kicked things off with an original skucamp music video, set at the William Gray. Mark Graham assured the room that no AI was involved. (There was a lot of AI involved.)

Then Mark and Catherine ran a quick French lesson, starting with the most useful phrase of the week: je ne parle pas français (I don't speak French).

There was plenty to celebrate before the first session, too: Régimbal Group turning 100, Delegate CX, Sky High Marketing and Goodmerch Supply making the 2026 Inc. 5000, and Hit Promotional Products opening its new 800,000-square-foot home in Fairfield, Ohio.

1. Clarity is a gift you give your team

If you lead people in this industry, you know the anxiety zone. New client, new system, new deadline, and not enough of anything to go around. In Todd Henry's opening workshop, one attendee said the whole industry lives there. When Todd asked the room if that was fair, the answer was yes.

Todd's answer wasn't to slow down. It was to get clearer. You'll rarely be certain you're making the right call, but you can always be clear about what the call is, why you made it and what it means for your team.

"The antidote to uncertainty is clarity."

Todd Henry, author of Herding Tigers

It's also why the people who push back on a plan can be your biggest help. Tony McNally of Vanguard told the story of a long-time colleague he calls Doubtful Dolly. When his team built an email for clients to approve proofs, Dolly asked the question nobody else had: what happens when the client says no, with a change? Leaders who make room for that kind of question end up with fewer surprises.

2. The best partners make you more yourself

Two partnerships stole the show.

Lynn Kostow and Lindsay West of Clementine Promotions have been friends since high school. When a new-hire kit pallet arrived at a client's office wrecked, at 3 p.m. on ship day, Lynn told him they'd be there in 30 minutes to unbox everything and drive it to UPS themselves. Meanwhile, Lindsay worked it out with the supplier without pointing a finger. That client is now one of their best. (A great save, as it happens, can build more trust than a clean order ever does.)

Renya Nelson and Dane Negrey of Brand+Aid named their session after the Utah Jazz's John Stockton and Karl Malone. Renya opens doors. Dane, who described her as someone who "can and will open any door," makes sure they close. That pairing turned a late-May phone call into print for 16 World Cup stadiums in about two weeks.

Neither pair is made of two of the same person, and that's the point. Renya's last slide put it best: "The best partnerships don't make you more alike. They make you more yourself."

3. Merch is marketing, so measure it like marketing

If you sell merch, you've seen it work. The harder part is proving it in the language a CMO uses.

Ana Andjelic, who has led brands like Banana Republic, made the case that merch belongs in a brand's cultural plan, not on the end of the order calendar. She also had a firm answer for anyone tempted to call the payoff "return on emotion" (Bobby Lehew tried, on stage, and got politely schooled): track sentiment, mentions and search volume over a full year. And for anyone selling to an insurance company or a local garage, she was blunt: "Every company has a brand."

Stephanie Hinkle of MadeToOrder brought the distributor side. Her pitch to owners weighing their first marketing hire is one question: "What is the cost of being invisible?"

Our take: the distributors who can talk about results, not just products, are going to have a lot of interesting conversations next year.

4. Let AI do the busywork. Keep the taste.

AI came up in nearly every session, and the most useful advice was also the simplest. Todd's version: embrace the friction that is the work, and hand off the friction that gets in its way.

The best example came from a panel that came together on 24 hours' notice, after a nor'easter grounded our scheduled speakers. Norma Arbulu of Maisonette, Maria Corpuz of Bel Merch & Design and Brittany Frase of MadeToOrder stepped up, and Norma summed it up in a few words. She wants AI handling everything except "critical thinking, taste, and vibes." Maria's team won't post anything on social that started as AI, because "money can't buy taste."

Caleb Gilbertson of Imprint Engine left the room with something to try. The next time you catch yourself saying AI will never do a task, flip it. Ask what it would need to do it tomorrow. At Imprint Engine, that started with an AI champion in every department and time each week to experiment. His view of where it all leads: "Yesterday we sold products, and today we manage projects. Tomorrow we design outcomes."

5. Say yes to the order you'd usually turn down

Ryan Wenkus of FAST Platform had the most practical advice of the event for anyone curious about print on demand: "Find that order that you would say no to, and say yes to it." He also described an order of 11,000 T-shirts shipped to 230 locations in four days, so POD isn't only for small runs. Jayson Tompkins of Fulfill Engine called POD the dessert, not a replacement for the bulk business you've built.

The supplier CEOs are heading the same way. Pierre Montaubin of Koozie Group said digital decoration grew from 19% of their output in 2019 to 55% last year, and all three CEOs on the panel (Pierre, Alan Meinstein of Spector & Co. and Josh Militello of PCNA) are adding people in front of distributors, not fewer. Pierre's line: "There's just relationships in this industry."

On our side, Charlie Moscoe announced that print-on-demand Shops are coming with Fulfill Engine, so these orders can run through the same workflow as everything else.

The souvenirs you can hold

Every piece in the kit was designed with a supplier partner and judged against four pillars: longevity, social and environmental impact, impeccable design and inclusivity.

Merci

The sessions gave us the ideas. The dine-arounds, the run club, the bagel walk and a closing night at Bord'Elle gave us the people to talk them over with. That has always been the best part of skucamp, and Montréal kept the tradition going.

Thank you to our presenting sponsors SanMar and Spector & Co., our supporting sponsors S&S Activewear, PCNA, Numo, Chameleon Like, Ruckus & Co., iClick, Hit Promotional Products, The Kanata Group and Outdoor Cap, PPAI and Office Beacon. Thank you to every speaker, especially the three who said yes with a day's notice, and to Talia Gowdar, who planned our first international skucamp, right down to the bagel stop. And thank you to everyone who crossed a border, set a 6:30 a.m. alarm, or both.

As for the crewnecks: customs finally let them go, and Aly shipped one to every attendee. So the last souvenir from Montréal showed up weeks after everyone got home.

The best souvenirs keep arriving long after the trip is over.

À la prochaine (we've been practising),

The commonsku Family