The Art & Science of Curation: A Supplier’s Perspective (Curation Series, Part 4)

Curation is the most underrated -yet vital- creative muscle in our business. This is why it’s somewhat baffling that as an industry of professional curators, we’ve never tried to codify the craft of curation. We never talk about it as a skill or teach our sales teams how to master the art of curation. 

And as I began to write this series, I soon found out why: curation is easy (for some of us) to do but hard to clarify how we do it since it’s both art + science. In this article, we explore curation from the perspective of a supplier but with lessons that distributors can learn from, too. Thanks to Saadia Bryant, (Vice President of Marketing at Gemline) and Jason Lucash, (Chief Development Officer at HPG / Founder of Origaudio) for their thoughts on this subject, though they are not quoted directly, their opinions and ideas influenced many of the thoughts in this article. 

It’s ironic: though we all sell the same products, suppliers and distributors are in two distinctly different businesses. 

One (of many) distinctions between a supplier and a distributor is the how and why: how they go about making the product choices they make and why they select the products they do.

Though we both sell branded products, the choices we make are influenced by the audiences we serve. 

A distributor curates for a specific audience and that audience is primarily an audience -singular- ie., a corporation’s employees or a non-profit’s donors, it’s a very specific and narrowly defined audience. A supplier curates for much broader audiences and broader categories, for example, the athleisure market, or products for the home, or new hire kits.

But rather than contrast suppliers and distributors, one way to appreciate our differences is to pan back and look at the entire industry as if it were a very large funnel that continually refines the product selection the closer it gets to the end-user.

At the top of the funnel sits the supplier: they sift through the world of product in general. It is estimated that in the US, over 30,000 new consumer products are introduced each year and 95% of these products fail.* Suppliers serve a vital role in that they look at the entire world of new products each year and hand-pick from the overwhelming pack of options, the ones they think will work best for our industry. 

And our motives are slightly different: While the distributor fulfills a creative brief specific to the client’s purpose, the supplier anticipates demand based on what the end customer is going to be asking for in the future, based on the usage, cultural trends, and more (below). 

In a sense, they create a vital link for distributors that we undervalue, an ability to coalesce a million options into smaller collections (a recent example is what many suppliers currently do through the collection feature on commonsku: they sift through the massive possibilities of a million products into a much more stream-lined, purpose-driven collection that accelerates the funnel process, even bypassing the mind-numbing search process and making product selection easy). 

Since the most successful suppliers are masterful sifters and brilliant curators of products, I wanted to explore their process: What are these inputs and filters that comprise their system for product selection? How do they know that the product they select from the infinite possibilities will be the right one?

The Science of Curation

One note: Curation -like many creative disciplines- is both art + science, and contrary to popular belief, creativity can be taught. Or at least, degrees of creativity can be taught. For example, an art teacher can teach you how to master rudimentary forms of brush strokes, just as a piano teacher can teach you to read sheet music, or an English teacher can teach you the mechanics of grammar and how to form complete sentences. Those skills are creative skills, they are just mechanical parts of the creative process -the science part- and as such, can be easily taught. 

But the stylistic part, the part that distinguishes a Picasso from a Pissaro, is the part of the process that can only be caught. It’s what the writer George Saunders called one’s “iconic space” and is something that is usually generated over time. One’s iconic space is the writer’s voice, the artist’s style, or, in the case of you and your company: your brand’s unique place in the market. This part of the creative process is a distinct reflection of your taste, born out of years of training through the art of awareness. 

I wanted to explore both parts of a supplier’s creative process: the things that could be taught, as well as the influences that could be caught. Though this list below in no way entails a comprehensive list of exactly how a supplier selects product, here are 8 vital inputs a supplier considers so that we can at least understand how a supplier thinks as they choose the products they choose: 

1. Does it meet our standard for quality? Every supplier has different criteria for quality but this step is crucial as it involves multiple factors like product safety, sustainability, and design, but “quality” is the first gate, if it doesn’t pass through this gate first, it’s rejected at the outset. A “good, better, best” comparison is key for a quality test.

2. Does this product fit well in our family of products? Are there any conflicts with existing products in our line? Will it compliment other products within our product mix? Which category does this fit into and does it make sense for us as a brand? Will this product confuse our audience? Popularity of a product doesn’t guarantee entry. A fidget spinner is popular but that doesn’t mean it’s the right product for a supplier. 

3. Is this a product the end-customer will actually want to keep? A no-brainer, right? You would think so, but it seems we don’t ask this question often enough, at least based on the overwhelming number of products being offered in our industry. One way to ask this question is to ask the following question …  

4. Exactly how is it being used? All tote bags are not created equal. People use tote bags for specific reasons, I might grab a long-handled tote on my way out the door to the grocery store which is different from the tote I might throw in my luggage as a laundry bag.  How is the customer going to use this product? “No landfill” is a basic filter, but an easy way to ask is: Will this product enter into the daily rhythm of the end-client’s lifestyle and if so, how?

5. Is it a trending product (or do we anticipate it trending) at retail and the consumer level?: Trending product is not just about a broad category like athleisure but colors, silhouettes, fabrics, and much more fit into trending. 

6. What’s happening in the current zeitgeist that makes this product important?  A zeitgeist is the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history, for example: COVID ushered in a cultural zeitgeist. COVID brought the at-home experiences (like food) to high demand, it also accelerated unprecedented demand for hygiene products. Another zeitgeist on the horizon might be the re-entry of many of us into the public sphere after vaccinations. It’s more than product-specific trends, it’s thinking in broad, cultural categories. What is happening in culture or on the horizon that will make this product important? 

7. Does this compliment our brand matrix? Many suppliers have introduced brands to the industry and as such have built an impressive brand portfolio. How does this brand compliment the other brands in the portfolio, does it conflict with other brands? How does this brand-story fit into our story? How does their story amplify our story? Can you be a good brand steward of this brand? 

The questions above are merely examples of many different inputs a supplier considers when taking on a new product and it’s quantifiable, qualifiable, and more science than art. 

But what about the “art” side of curation?  

The Art of Curation

The science part of curation is largely about utility, rational thinking, and common sense: If it’s functional, useful, and makes good business sense, a potential product can pass through very objective filters at each stage of consideration. 

But the artistic side of curation is a far more subjective skill and therefore more difficult to qualify. The “art” side of product selection emanates from a more organic impulse, usually driven by a tastemaker who studies culture, design, and product trends. 

Like many who are asked to speak about their creative process, Jason Lucash is one of those creative thinkers who has a hard time putting into words exactly what he does to curate the right product for their lines, but the recent Batch and Bodega line is a masterclass in careful product selection. What you end up seeing as the final product on the Batch website has gone through a host of qualifying filters (like those listed above) but additionally, many that are subjective. 

For example, after answering the question of whether the product itself is a quality product and if it makes business sense for their brand, Jason’s design eye jumps right to the more artistic elements: packaging, colorways, and balance, asking questions like: Does this product complement our existing colors? Is the packaging compelling and if not, can we create a more compelling option? How do we create harmony with this product besides our existing product selections? 

Though traits like harmony and style are far more subjective traits, there is something concrete that we can do to further our curation skills and that is to develop our creative eye. 

One of the most intriguing ideas Jason mentioned was gleaning inspiration from multiple sources. Jason’s advice? Be a sponge. Rather than dumb-thumbing through Instagram (as Jason mentioned), you can learn from Instagram: colors that are trending, styles that are trending, experiences that are trending, you can at least learn from these influences in a periphery way. Jason absorbs product design ideas from multiple resources like Pinterest, The Dieline, Trendhunter, and from retailers at Abbot Kinney in LA. 

An example: Recently, Jason and his team were considering the colorways for a new brand, and both he and his team members had seen ads for Magic Spoon cereal, the high protein cereal that skyrocketed to popularity. What they gleaned from the Magic Spoon cereal brand was colorways inspiration, learning from the color choices of their branding. Many distributors go through the same experience. In a recent skucast episode Sean Mooney, partner at Showpony, mentioned several sources from where he develops his creative intuition including citing Nike’s new product releases as one example of where he goes for color inspiration and Jeremy Picker cited similarly his habit of studying brands like Adidas. 

Throughout this series on curation, we explored various aspects from Developing the Craft of Curation to how it’s the Most Underrated -and Teachable- Skill for the Promo Professional Today plus 6 Framework Questions for Curating well. 

And as we conclude this series, the most important lesson I learned is that those who think through the process are generally the leaders who pull ahead of the pack, they are the ones who consistently bring forth good ideas because they leave no details to chance, vigorously testing, debating, and vetting all aspects of product consideration.

There are no such thing as “details.”

Everything about a product is important.

Moreover, the curation process is the essential missing ingredient from some “spray and pray” supplier brands. The professional curators don’t leap from “that’s a great idea” straight to merchandising, they force each decision through vital filters, filters that are crucial components of their brand, filters that unique to their mission, filters that constitute a curation discipline. For discerning suppliers, like Gemline, it’s such a dedicated discipline that a variety of team members are responsible for this task: industrial designers, product managers, marketing professionals, designers, and more.

At some point, a new supplier will be reading this article, a supplier who has entered the promotional products industry solely on the back of one, star product, a product that minted their freshman success in the business. That one product proved to them that this multi-billion dollar market is worth expanding into and they will begin to ask the question of how they can expand and which products to choose. They will be eager to grow and anxious to “just start adding stuff” but before they take that step, I hope they study the market leaders who curate wisely, the ones who filter through their decisions -like a code of ethics- through a conscious, deliberate, and sustainable methodology meant to not only build their success but to contribute to the success of our industry as a whole.

*Clay Christensen