“Everything changed in 2020. And everything may change again in 2021.”
That’s a quote from this year’s State of the Industry Report produced by ASI, the Advertising Specialty Institute. The SOI is a report produced annually by ASI, it was released this week and it’s an incredibly comprehensive report which includes rankings of the top 40 suppliers and distributors and also a wide variety of topics: which categories sold more, verticals, issues facing the industry, more.
Today, we’re joined by Michele Bell and Nate Kucsma from ASI. Michele is a vice president at ASI, she oversees the Editorial, Special Events, and Education teams. With more than 30 years of journalism experience, she has been with ASI for 24 years and is the recipient of multiple Neal Awards, known as the Pulitzer Prize of business journalism. Michele also covers the overseas promo markets extensively, attending shows around the world to profile for ASI’s content platforms. Nate Kucsma, is ASI’s executive director of Research and Corporate Marketing. Nate joined ASI in March 2014 and has over 20 years of domestic and international marketing research experience. Prior to ASI, he worked at Dow Jones, MetLife, and ETS.
When I was a distributor, each year, I would use the state of the industry report not merely as a bellwether for trends but also, I would use it to as a counterpoint. I would review the newcomers on the top 40 list, look at their value propositions, evaluate their marketing, not to copy them but to build a contrasting and unique business different from them. I would use trends as a way to either double down or counter. Or maybe identify new verticals we weren’t working with but the research shows that spending is up with those industries. I would watch closely the eCommerce space, not as a way to emulate what was happening in the market but as a way to put our own unique emphasis on eCommerce. For example, Nate and Michele, and I talk about the upward trend of e-commerce but how few distributors really do end-to-end commerce. In this example, at commonsku, we’ve seen shops skyrocket in demand so, shops are an area where I would double down on.
The SOI report was a report I looked forward to every year, today, I talk with Nate and Michele about trends, the impact of PPE, those who focused on PPE and increased sales, and those who didn’t focus on PPE and still, increased sales, we talk about how the industry feels about work from home and the hybrid office, average order values, supply chain issues, and our over-reliance on China.
It’s a robust discussion and Michele and Nate, as you’ll soon discover, are not just looking with me at the road behind us in the rearview mirror but front windshield, where we can go, moving forward!