The second annual Print On Demand Conference welcomed 250 suppliers, distributors, decorators and other players in the print-on-demand (POD) space to West Palm Beach, FL, from Feb. 16 to 18. The interactive event, hosted by Stahls’ (asi/88984) Fulfill Engine, featured networking opportunities and a full slate of education on topics that included AI adoption; the impact of name, image, likeness (NIL) on the branded merch business; and how to elevate the end-user experience at all stages of the POD process.

The Print On Demand Conference, held Feb. 16 to 18 in West Palm Beach, FL, included a hat bar experience, where attendees could customize caps with a variety of event-specific patches.

“We put everyone in the same room – even if they’re competitors – and say ‘Be nice,’” said Carleen Gray, CEO of Stahls’, a member of the Counselor Power 50 list and the 2025 International Person of the Year. “This conference couldn’t exist without a collaborative approach and bringing so many people in from different parts of this industry.”

POD From Adoption to Acceleration

POD is still at the starting line, in terms of adoption in print and promo, but it’s growing quickly. That was the message from the kick-off session of the conference, hosted by Rusty Pepper, head of global markets and partnerships at Taylor OnDemand.

“I think we’ve seen massive momentum over the last couple of years,” said Rob Watson, CEO of Counselor Top 40 supplier Vantage Apparel (asi/93390) and a member of the Counselor Power 50 list. He added that in 2024, POD accounted for about 14% of Vantage’s business; by 2025, it had grown to about 34% of the supplier’s business. “While that [growth] might seem very rocket ship-like, I still think there’s so much opportunity to grab market share. We’re right at the beginning of the curve.”

From left, Ryan Baise of Youth Inc., Rusty Pepper of Taylor OnDemand, Lisa Hubbard of The Vernon Company (asi/351700) and Rob Watson of Vantage Apparel (asi/93390) talk about the adoption and acceleration of POD in the print, promo and e-commerce industries.

The key to success, said Lisa Hubbard, vice president of sales and marketing at Counselor Top 40 distributor The Vernon Company (asi/351700) and a member of the Counselor Power 50 list, is building the right infrastructure to ensure seamless, automated transactions that don’t waste valuable time or resources. Vernon spent months researching the right way to enter the space before launching a POD program in October 2025. “As distributors, one of the key factors for us to even jump into the space was we don’t want to touch the orders,” she added. “If we have to touch the orders, we’re not going to be successful. … [But] if you do it right, then the opportunities are limitless.”

One area that’s improved with POD in recent years, according to Ryan Baise, founder and CEO of Youth Inc., is the “standardization and quality of the actual decoration,” making it easy to employ POD for any order size, not just minimum order quantities of one.

Baise, who previously worked at Fanatics, noted that, “The print technology wasn’t really there at a scale and quality that we felt great about, and I think that has evolved a lot in three years.”

What’s also changing is distributors’ perception of POD, Watson said: “A lot more of our partners are realizing that print on demand is not replacing revenue, but it’s net new revenue opportunities.”

The Big Leagues of On Demand

Josh Ellsworth, chief revenue officer of Stahls’, sat down with Allen Sandberg, director of retail operations for the Atlanta Braves, to talk about how the Fulfill Engine platform was able to transform the fan experience at last year’s MLB All-Star Game, allowing them to heat-print custom jerseys for fans inside Truist Park.

“It’s very easy nowadays to be able to buy merchandise online,” Sandberg said. “It’s much easier than coming to a stadium and standing in line to purchase your merchandise, so how can we enhance that on our end to make that connection with our fans when it’s hard? How do we take that experience to the next level?”

The answer, he added, has been employing POD technology to enable personalization at speed, letting fans add their own names to the back of the jersey they purchase. “Getting the jersey at the game really just builds that connection [between fans and the team],” he said.

Lessons Learned From NIL

Another session, moderated by Mykayla Goodwin, vice president of strategy for OrderMyGear, featured Steven Farag, CEO and cofounder of Campus Ink and The NIL Store, and Luke McGurrin, cofounder and chief marketing officer at Athlete’s Thread. The discussion centered around how small passionate audiences – who are supporting individual college athletes – can drive significant business.

Leveraging technology, automation and marketing strategies is key, they said, to meeting the fast-paced demands of the NIL market.

“We track and monitor every day, every night, every one of our teams that is playing,” Farag said. “If there’s a hot moment, we want to be faster than Barstool Sports. We want to get a shirt up within an hour of the game.”

That means, he added, that the design needs to be mocked up and approved by licensing, then added to the right products, uploaded to Shopify and marketed to the right customer base. “For us, speed is everything,” he said.

Other Conference Highlights

The conference also held a session on cutting through AI noise where Ryan Hutchinson, chief product and technology officer at ASI; Charlie Mosco, vice president of product management at commonsku; and Phil Gergen, chief information officer of Counselor Top 40 supplier Koozie Group (asi/40480), shared real-world examples of how they’re using AI to build search relevance, clean up product data and prioritize customer requests.

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In the wrap-up session, Ross Greenstein, CEO of Brand Sauce, and I chatted about building consumer-driven shopping experiences for corporate merch. The interactive session, which included audience participation, explored how rethinking the corporate merch experience can unlock greater budget, deeper engagement and measurable business impact.

Peppered throughout the conference were short pitches from emerging innovators, showing off everything from autonomous humanoid robots designed to speed up the printing process to AI-powered tools that automate product proofs and project quoting.

The one point Gray said she hoped attendees left the conference with was this: “Print on demand is not a trend. It’s a real business model. … [Fulfill Engine] is a trusted, proven platform that is helping businesses succeed.”