For the first time in more than a decade, promotional products distributors’ collective sales experienced a quarterly decline, dropping nearly 5% in Q1 2020. In this podcast, Counselor Executive Editor Christopher Ruvo and Nathaniel Kucsma, ASI’s Executive Director of Research & Corporate Marketing, discuss the out-of-the-blue drop, offer insights on how 2020 industry sales will go, and share signs of hope for a revenue rebound. 

Podcast Chapters
0:38 – The first 10 weeks of the year were going well.
1:54 – “Like a nationwide hurricane.”
4:47 – Smaller distributors were hit harder by COVID-19's economic impacts.
7:38 – The word on Q2 sales.
11:02 – Looking ahead to Q3 and Q4.
14:01 -- When might pre-crisis sales levels return for the industry?
18:03 – “A sharp bump up in growth.”

Part of the discussion focuses on the fact that the Q1 retraction was especially remarkable because the first approximately 10 weeks of the quarter were positive from a sales perspective. Indeed, ASI research suggests distributors were on track to post another year-over-year quarterly gain.

“The last two weeks of March completely undid the first 10 weeks of the year which, by all accounts, were looking very strong for the industry,” said Kucsma. “I don’t know that anyone has ever seen anything like this before on such a nationwide level.”

Promo Distributor Sales Drop 4.9% In Q1 https://t.co/zf9NvC0tZX

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) April 14, 2020

Of course the precipitous decline in sales at Q1’s end was a result of economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Similar business conditions are persisting through the early part of Q2 and figure to reverberate forward – factors that could drag down distributors’ overall sales in the double-digit range this quarter. Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. As Ruvo notes in the podcast, some economists are predicting at least a partial rebound for U.S. GDP in the third and fourth quarters. What might that mean for promo? Listen to the podcast to find out.