Every Click Through Enquiry on Sourcing City is a professional distributor, in front of a real customer, choosing what to present. Not a survey. Not a forecast. A decision. Here is what 675,000 of them reveal about where this industry is heading.
Most market intelligence is backward-looking. This isn't. A Click Through Enquiry is captured the moment a distributor actively selects a product to present to an end user. It is intent made visible, in real time.
The promotional merchandise industry has no shortage of opinion. Trade press articles, conference predictions, supplier newsletters — all of it useful context, none of it particularly evidenced. What Sourcing City has, and what no other platform in the UK can match, is 19 years of actual buying behaviour data, captured at product level, in real time.
A Click Through Enquiry is not a page view. It is not a search. It is the moment a distributor — sitting with a customer brief, or building a proposal, or responding to an RFQ — decides that a specific product is worth presenting. That click has commercial intent behind it. 675,000 of those clicks happened in 2025.
What follows is not a forecast built on assumptions. It is a reading of what UK and Ireland distributors actually reached for, across every product category, throughout an entire year. And because we can see the 2026 trajectory already forming in current YTD data, we can say with genuine confidence what the next twelve months look like — not as a prediction, but as a continuation of something already in motion.
"The most honest demand signal in the industry is not what suppliers hope distributors will buy. It is what distributors actually present to customers. That is what this data captures."
For distributors, this intelligence has a very specific value: it tells you what your peer group is presenting to customers right now. Not last year's bestseller list. Not a supplier's stocking recommendation. What the market is reaching for, today, at scale.
Bags. Pens. Travel Mugs. The classics are not dead — they are growing. But the story underneath the top line is more interesting than the rankings suggest.
The top five item types in 2025 will not surprise anyone who has been in this industry for more than a year. Bags lead with 40,501 CT Enquiries. Pens follow at 36,854. Travel Mugs, Sports Drink Bottles and Jotters complete the top five. These are the workhorses of the promotional merchandise market and they show no signs of fatigue.
What is worth pausing on is the growth rate. Bags grew 11.1% year on year. Pens grew 19.7%. Sports Drink Bottles grew 23.0%. These are not products holding their position — they are accelerating. The market is not diversifying away from its core categories. It is doubling down on them, while growth emerges at the edges.
The edges are where the real intelligence sits. Power Banks grew 37.0%. Fans grew 35.9%. Chargers grew 20.4%. These are not novelty categories — they are responding to a structural shift in what end users expect to receive as promotional merchandise. The desk and the meeting room have been replaced by the commute, the event, and the charging point.
"Your customers' customers want things that are useful outside the office. Power Banks grew 37% this year. That is not a coincidence."
The themed group data adds another layer. Eco Friendly Ideas sits at number one with 130,069 CT Enquiries and grew 15.0% — but we will deal with sustainability separately, because it deserves its own chapter.
Exhibition Giveaways came second with 127,590 CTs, Desk Gifts third with 102,606. Travel Related grew 17.4%, reflecting the return of business travel and events to something resembling normality. Drink Related — mugs, bottles, flasks — grew 13.0%.
Sports Items is the standout performer in the themed groups: up 19.2% to 45,889 CTs. This is a category that benefits from multiple converging tailwinds — wellness culture, active gifting, and the broader shift toward products that leave the desk and accompany people through their day.
It is the baseline. Eco Friendly Ideas has led the themed group rankings for three consecutive years. At 130,069 CT Enquiries, it is not trending — it has arrived. The question now is what you do with that.
Let us be direct about what the data is telling distributors here. Eco Friendly Ideas generating 130,069 CT Enquiries in 2025 — 15% more than the previous year — is not a signal that sustainability is becoming popular. It is a signal that sustainability has become expected. There is a difference.
When something becomes expected rather than aspirational, the competitive dynamic changes fundamentally. You are no longer winning business by offering sustainable options. You are losing business if you cannot. The threshold has moved.
Eco-Bags reinforces this at category level. At rank 15 with 35,459 CTs and 11.4% growth, it confirms that sustainability is not concentrated in a single themed group — it is distributed across the product landscape as an expectation applied to whatever the customer is already looking for.
"Three consecutive years at number one is not a trend. It is a structural shift. Distributors who are still treating eco credentials as a premium add-on are misreading the market."
The practical implication for distributors is this: your conversations with end users are happening against a backdrop where sustainability is assumed. If a client brief does not mention it, that does not mean they do not care — it means they assume you will bring it regardless.
Suppliers face an adjacent challenge. When every new product launched has an ethical story — and the data suggests this is broadly true — the risk of greenwashing grows alongside the genuine sustainability offer. End users are becoming more sophisticated. Distributors who can distinguish authentic certification from marketing language will earn trust. Those who cannot will lose it.
The 2026 forecast for Eco Friendly Ideas shows continued growth at 131,257 CTs. This is not a category to exit, rationalise, or deprioritise. It is the centre of the market.
Annual rankings tell you what won. 90-day growth data tells you what is winning. These are the products and categories accelerating fastest in 2026 — the early signals that will become next year's mainstream.
There is a category of intelligence that does not appear in any annual report, including this one: the products that are just beginning to move. The ones that will top the rankings in twelve months, but which distributors who act now can get ahead of.
Our fastest growing individual product in the current 90-day window is the Express Promotional Football from Just Balls Sporting Ltd — up 377%, from 13 CTs to 62 in a single quarter. This is not a statistical aberration. The 2026 forecast for Sports Items as a themed group shows +9.8% growth, and Olympics sits at rank 9 with a +4.8% 2026 forecast.
Something is happening in the sports and active category — and if you need a reason, look at your calendar. The FIFA World Cup kicked off on 11th June. Wimbledon began on 29th June and runs until 12th July. For a fortnight both tournaments run simultaneously, with the World Cup final not until 19th July. The largest sporting event on the planet and the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, overlapping across the Great British summer. The promotional merchandise opportunity that accompanies a summer of sport at this scale is not subtle. Footballs, rackets, fan merchandise, sports accessories, branded event items — the briefs are landing. The question for distributors is whether their sports product relationships and supplier conversations were already in place when they did. The data said this was coming. Now it is here.
"The Breeze Fan from Promo Trade Co is up 257% in 90 days. That is not a fluke — it is a distributor community reaching for something that was not in the mainstream range last season."
The fastest growing products in the current window reveal a pattern worth noting. They are predominantly practical, portable, and event-oriented. Promotional Football. Tennis Ball. Fan. Neoprene Beer Holder. These are products for outdoor occasions, shared experiences, moments that happen away from the desk.
This is consistent with the Travel Related themed group growing 17.4% and Beach BBQ & Picnic showing a +3.0% 2026 forecast. The post-pandemic shift toward experience-led gifting and event merchandise has not reversed. It has embedded itself into normal procurement patterns.
For distributors, the actionable read here is straightforward: if your range conversations with suppliers are still anchored around office products, you are behind the market. The customer's day does not happen at a desk anymore. Your product offer should reflect that.
We are writing this at the midpoint of 2026. The data is not forecasting the future. It is describing a present that most of the market has not caught up with yet.
This white paper is published on the first day of July 2026 — the exact midpoint of the year. Half of 2026 has already happened. The signals we are describing here are not forecasts built from last year's data. They are observations drawn from six months of live platform activity, extrapolated across the second half of a year that is already well underway. This is not prediction. It is pattern recognition with half the evidence already in.
Sports Items is the standout 2026 story, with a +9.8% forecast on top of a 19.2% 2025 performance. Travel Related follows at +4.0%, Beach BBQ & Picnic at +3.0%. The pattern is coherent: outdoor, active, experiential. This is where the growth is, and the momentum is building rather than plateauing.
The Olympics category shows a +4.8% 2026 forecast, which requires some context. There is no Olympics in 2026 — the Los Angeles Games are in 2028. The growth in this category likely reflects the longer tail of sporting events merchandise: local sports clubs, charity runs, company sports days. The Olympics themed group is functioning as a proxy for sports event merchandise more broadly.
There are also meaningful moderating signals worth noting. Sports Drink Bottle, which grew 23% in 2025, shows a -6.9% 2026 forecast trend. This is not a collapse — it is a category that grew very fast and is now normalising at a higher level. Pen shows a similar -6.3% forecast trend after a 19.7% 2025 performance.
Distributors who chased these categories aggressively in 2025 should plan for slightly lower growth in 2026 rather than assuming the trajectory continues. Those who are just entering these categories will find a large, stable market rather than the growth story of last year.
"Sports Items grew 19.2% in 2025 and the 2026 forecast adds another 9.8%. That is a category in structural expansion, not cyclical growth. If you do not have strong sports product relationships, now is the time."
Based on 2026 YTD platform data extrapolated to full-year projection.
The distributors who will perform best in 2026 and beyond are not necessarily the ones with the largest ranges or the lowest prices. They are the ones who can read buying signals accurately and respond faster than their competitors.
This data gives you three things. First, confirmation that the core categories are growing — you do not need to abandon Bags, Pens and Travel Mugs for the next shiny object. Second, a clear indication of where the edge of the market is moving: outdoor, active, experience-led, tech-adjacent. Third, an early warning on which categories may be normalising after strong growth.
None of this requires a wholesale change in how you operate. It requires a calibration. Which supplier conversations are you having about Sports Items? Do you have a credible outdoor and event range? Are you across Power Banks and Chargers in a category growing at 37% and 20% respectively?
The market has spoken — loudly, and with 675,000 data points. The question is whether your range, your supplier relationships, and your customer conversations are aligned with what it is saying.
The Sourcing City Purple Club Annual Market Report contains the complete dataset — every item type, every themed group, every supplier ranking, with 2024 comparisons and full 2026 forecasts. Exclusive to Purple Club members.
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