The promotional products industry is getting a new name for itself, and the change is being led from the top. This month PPAI, the industry's largest association, made the case for moving the trade's language from promotional products to branded merchandise — and a Facebook group of industry professionals — founded in 2008, with more than 15,000 members across nine countries — renamed itself Branded Merchandise Professionals to match. (PPAI's own reporting has the details.)
Why the industry is reaching for a new word
PPAI's argument, from President and CEO Drew Holmgreen, is that the category is simply bigger than the old label suggests. It now spans apparel, experiences, food, and far more than the giveaway bin — and, in his words, "what we do is bigger than product." "Promotional products" undersells that. Worse, it carries the baggage of the tchotchke handed out at a booth: a cost line, not a marketing channel.
"Branded merchandise" does the opposite. It reads as strategic, it sheds the giveaway association, and it lands with a newer generation of marketers who never called it "promo" in the first place. PPAI is backing the repositioning with an Oxford Economics global impact study, due in the third quarter of 2026, that reframes the industry's value beyond the headline U.S. distributor-sales figure.
Why "merchandise" is the right word
It's a well-chosen word, because "merchandise" carries an expectation "promotional products" never did. It implies product people choose, personalize, and keep — the stuff of a retail shelf, not a giveaway table. Nobody calls a leftover stress ball "merchandise."
And it fits where the category is heading. More and more, branded merch is bought the way retail is bought: people picking their own size, personalizing at checkout, and ordering what they actually want rather than receiving whatever was bulk-ordered on a guess. The name PPAI is reaching for describes not just what the industry sells, but the more considered, more retail-like experience it's increasingly built around.
What it means if you sell merch
Two things follow for distributors and decorators.
First, use the language your buyers use. Marketing managers, HR leads, founders, and club organizers tend to search "branded merch," "company swag," or "custom merch" — rarely "promotional products." PPAI's move gives the whole industry permission to meet them there: in storefront copy, product titles, page metadata, and the plain-English answers AI search engines increasingly pull from.
Second, live up to the word. "Merchandise" sets a retail expectation — real product, real choice, real quality, delivered like a store. If the experience behind it is still a two-week order window, a bulk minimum, and a box of unsold sizes, the new name is just paint. The opportunity in PPAI's rebrand is to make the noun true.
A good sign
It's a healthy moment when an industry updates how it describes itself — and a credit to PPAI for leading it. "Branded merchandise" isn't a fashionable relabel. It's a signal that the category has grown up, and that the association is willing to say so out loud.
New to the term? Here's what branded merch actually is, and more on why the words matter.