For job seekers, the labor market is tough, and only getting tougher. Unemployment has been hovering at historic lows – but so has the quit rate, which usually means workers are nervous about job prospects if they were to leave their current roles. For those who are out of work, it’s taking noticeably longer to find new roles in an extraordinarily oversaturated market, particularly in certain white-collar sectors facing a hiring drought.
Percentage of Suppliers That Increased Employee Count in 2024
What’s dismal for applicants, though, is a boon for employers – including promo suppliers. The vast number of qualified job seekers in the market means that suppliers today largely have their pick of the cream of the crop.
“I think the talent pool is as strong as it could be right now,” says Matt Rubin, director of strategy at Counselor Top 40 supplier Blue Generation (asi/40653).
He’s seen a big increase in the quality of candidates Blue Generation’s job postings have attracted over the past year – which has been an asset as the supplier enters a growth phase, Rubin says. The company has added several new high-level team members over the past eight months, but it has been able to place a particular focus on hiring to build company culture and foster long-term retention during that process in a way it couldn’t necessarily over the past few years.
“I think the talent pool is as strong as it could be right now.”Matt Rubin, Blue Generation (asi/40653)
Dan Oas, CEO of High Caliber Line (asi/43442), notes a similar phenomenon. The California-based supplier relies on a comprehensive culture index – essentially a personality test – when hiring office staff and salespeople, and Oas has noticed a massive improvement in retention levels for employees added through that process.
Suppliers don’t have to look too far in the past to remember The Great Resignation, when workers in 2021 and 2022 across the country quit their jobs in droves and available workers were beyond scarce. During that period, promo companies didn’t have the bandwidth to be as particular about their new hires as they scrambled to keep up with rebounding demand. But the worst of those struggles are behind the industry now, and suppliers’ increasing selectivity shows in the data: Nearly 40% of suppliers increased headcount in 2022, compared to 22% last year.
“Those days are long gone,” says John Bruellman, CEO at Counselor Top 40 supplier Showdown Displays (asi/87188) and a member of the Counselor Power 50. “And we’re better because of it – I think we’ve been able to be much pickier since then.”
Change at Work
Although there’s far less concern industry-wide about employee recruiting and retaining, that’s not to say companies haven’t needed to raise the bar to stay competitive. Even as it’s declined the last two years, the majority of suppliers reported raising wages in 2024 to keep and attract the best workers, and that attitude has also extended to non-salary perks like remote work or expanded PTO offerings. “COVID-19 did push the industry to think differently and adjust — giving more flexible work structures, more emphasis on well-being, more tech-forward training,” says Matt Rubin of Counselor Top 40 supplier Blue Generation (asi/40653), which has become more adaptable, for example, when it comes to offering hybrid or remote work options for employees.
Supplier Labor Statements
The outlook is more mixed inside supplier warehouses and factories. As demand increases for Made-in-USA products, American manufacturers will be challenged to find workers who are willing to work factory jobs. Meanwhile, while a company like Showdown says it might have a sufficient number of employees at any given time, new hires need significant training to develop the skill set for the job. And as a domestic manufacturer, there’s often more steps to the process that happen in-house
“It’s not so much attracting labor,” Bruellman says. “It’s identifying the right folks to join the team, and then having them stick around for a period of time once they become effective and minimizing that turnover.”
Some suppliers note the continuation of the positive labor trend in their distribution centers; at Counselor Top 40 supplier SanMar (asi/84863), for example, retention rates have increased despite some expectation that they’d be down, says Chief People Officer Jennifer Larson.
However, Oas says High Caliber Line has seen difficulties when it comes to workers on the warehouse side, including with turnover. He primarily uses a temp agency to staff his production floor, but he’s struggled with both the number and quality of workers they’ve sent his way in recent months.
“It’s fewer people,” Oas says, “and they’re lower quality.”
Percentage of Orders Requiring 5-Day or Less Turnaround
(Reported by Suppliers)
Faster & Faster
The number of orders requiring rapid turnaround times – five days or less – has been ticking back up since it dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Some suppliers have noted an increased sense of urgency from clients eager to get their hands on product, but for others, it’s just a sign of true industry recovery. The expectation from clients, says John Bruellman, president of Counselor Top 40 supplier Showdown Displays (asi/87188), has been to get it here and get it here fast. “It’s more of a return to normal,” he says.
He has his suspicions that the current climate around immigration has resulted in fear from foreign workers, regardless of whether their documentation paperwork is in order. But he’s also felt a labor pinch because of the increased number of in-house orders his facility was inundated with in the spring, as opposed to factory direct shipping from overseas. Oas stocked up with one of the largest collections of blank inventory he’s ever kept on hand ahead of tariffs going into effect, which served him well as far as customer demand goes, but more orders decorated in-house does mean a need for more labor.
One area he’s saved on labor costs, though, has been through the use of artificial intelligence. He’s trained an AI system to enter orders, which allowed the staff formerly focused on order entry to pivot almost entirely to quality control work instead. It now takes about a minute for the AI system to enter orders, then about five minutes for a quality check – a far cry from the 20 minutes or so the manual order entry process took.
“Anytime you have something repetitive, then you can automate,” he says. “That, for sure, is going to change the workforce.”
Mistakes Happen
Even with improvements in labor, the rate of error-free orders dropped by four percentage points last year. The promo industry supply chain involves many steps to get a product from its factory to the hands of a consumer, so there are numerous places where things can go wrong. “As you see more turnover,” says High Caliber Line (asi/43442) CEO Dan Oas, “sometimes people just don’t pay attention – or don’t know that they need to pay attention.” John Bruellman of Showdown Displays (asi/87188), though, warns that mistakes often stem from issues with training or process instead of the individuals on the warehouse floor themselves. He cautions suppliers to look at the complexity of their production cycle and the instructions their employees are given, especially if they’re wrestling with a high error rate.
Percentage of Orders Delivered Without Any Errors From Suppliers
(Reported by Distributors)