Promotional Products

Top New Promo Merch Products 2023

Top New Products for 2023

Each January, our team is excited to attend the PPAI EXPO in Las Vegas, where we explore the new and trending promo merch products in the industry. Featuring more than 1,200 exhibitors and showcasing more than a quarter million products, we see, touch and taste a lot of promo merch! We reviewed the products that caught our eye, sampled the quality and discussed which items would have the biggest impact for our clients. Then our team compiled a list of our favorite new products for 2023! Check out our 2023

Read More »
2022 new and trending products

New & Trending Products for 2022

Each January, our team is super excited to attend the PPAI EXPO in Las Vegas where we explore the new and trending products in the industry. We commit to staying on top of trends and identifying products that are not just fun and/or cool, but will help build and strengthen communities for their targeted audiences. After each EXPO, our team creates a list of our favorite new and trending products. For 2022, we really liked 13 items, so instead of the usual top 10 list, we broke the mold and

Read More »
promo merch trends

Promo Merch Trends and Other Observations

The promotional product industry is constantly evolving with the types of products available. To stay on top of what is new and trending in the industry, every January our company attends the PPAI EXPO in Las Vegas (our industry’s largest trade show). At this event, our production partners showcase their product lines, giving us the opportunity to see, touch and sometimes even smell at over 1000 booths. This show is always a good opportunity to reflect on what promo merch trends we are seeing from a macro perspective.  After walking

Read More »
branded-merch

Reading Roundup: Through the Merch Monocle

To make sure we’re always giving our clients the most relevant and forward-thinking solutions, we like to stay up to date on news, trends, and ideas that can empower our clients. There’s tons of great content to consume, but not enough of it talks about the value of integrating branded merch, especially since promo can help in so many ways.   Fortunately, the question “How would merch help?” is always in mind at Magellan when we read, share, watch, listen and scroll basically any professional content. So, even though most of

Read More »
swag tells your story

What The Voice Tells Us About College Recruitment and Swag

If college recruitment and admissions were ever made into a reality competition show, it might look a bit like The Voice. And it’s a singing example of how swag can tell your story. The competition starts with a small panel of industry celebrities evaluating a large group of contestants one by one based solely on a single “blind” audition. If the coaches like what they hear, they turn their chairs around to signal to the contestant, “I want you on my team.” When more than one coach “turns” for a

Read More »

Unprecedented Times in the Promotional Product Industry

Supply Chain Update – 2/22/22 As this situation continues to evolve, I wanted to provide an update on the supply chain of our production partners.   Product Availability: Lead times and availability of raw materials continue to be a challenge for our production partners. The worldwide effects of COVID remains the major factor that has slowed the system. This includes the shut down of overseas factories and ports and the challenge of factories accessing raw materials.  When the product is made, delivery to the United States is delayed with the

Read More »

Variable Data Best Practices

  • At the quoting stage of your project, please let us know how many fields of variable data your piece will have as this can affect pricing.
  • Data should be provided to us as an Excel spreadsheet with only the applicable data included.
  • Verbiage for variable data fields on artwork file should match up exactly with data fields on spreadsheet.
  • Spacing on artwork must allow for longest data entries. We recommend that your designer tests this in advance to confirm that the fields in the design can fit your longest pieces of data.

Postage Permits

We are happy to mail using a client’s USPS non-profit number. Here are a few best practices for this to go smoothly. Let our team know up front on the project so we can make sure to get the information we need right away. 

While our mail house does prefer to use their permit number for the mailing, we can use the client’s permit, If using their permit number, ensure there is enough postage to cover the mailing.

The information we need to in order to use a client’s nonprofit number includes the following:

Formatting the Mailing List

Our account team will advise on specific requirements for your project’s mailing list.  We generally recommend these best practices to format the mailing list: