Sourcing promotional merchandise and branded goods

Branded merchandise has an unusual risk profile

Promotional products are bought for a date and a purpose rather than for a shelf. That changes the risks: the deadline is usually immovable, the print has to be right first time, and the buyer is often putting a client's brand on the product rather than their own.

It also changes the compliance question, because merchandise is given away rather than sold, and a lot of buyers assume that removes their obligations. It does not. Placing a product on the UK market covers making it available in the course of a commercial activity, whether or not money changes hands.

Branding is a compliance event, not just artwork

Under most UK product regimes, placing goods on the market under your own name or trade mark makes you the manufacturer in law rather than the importer. That is exactly what promotional merchandise is: someone's brand applied to a product. Where a product falls only under general product safety rules the term is producer rather than manufacturer, but the direction is the same, and the branded item is where responsibility settles.

The consequence is that the technical documentation, the declaration of conformity and responsibility for any marking sit with whoever's brand is on it. If you are an agency buying on behalf of a client, establish in writing whose name goes on the product and who therefore carries those obligations, because the answer decides who is exposed if something goes wrong.

This is worth settling before the order, not in the post-mortem after a complaint.

Watch for merchandise that is legally something else

A branded item can fall into a stricter regime than anyone expected. Anything intended for play by children under fourteen is a toy, with the full toy safety requirements including your name and address on the product itself. Anything touching food or drink, such as branded mugs, bottles and lunchboxes, is a food contact product with declarations and testing behind it.

Powered items are electrical products, with waste electrical obligations, and if there are cells in the box you are normally a battery producer too. Power banks and cables bring their own safety considerations, and lithium cells carry air freight restrictions that a tight deadline may depend on.

Chemical restrictions under UK REACH cover a great deal of merchandise, particularly coated, printed, plated and soft plastic items.

Getting the print right

Specify the print process, the colour to a recognised colour system with a physical approved proof, position with dimensions, and size. Then specify durability: how many washes, how much abrasion, whether it survives a dishwasher if the item is a mug.

Require a printed pre-production sample and approve it in writing. Screen proofs do not represent printed output, and colour on a coated surface behaves differently from colour on fabric.

Specify what happens to the print on the seconds. Merchandise runs generate misprints, and agreeing the acceptable defect rate and what happens to rejects avoids an argument at delivery.

Deadlines, which are the whole business

Merchandise orders are usually tied to an event, and an event does not move. Build the plan backwards from the date with the whole chain in it, and put explicit buffer at sample approval, which is where most merchandise orders lose their slack.

Keep a decision point where air freight is still possible, and know the cost in advance so the decision can be made quickly rather than debated. On a low-value bulky item air can be prohibitive, which is an argument for ordering earlier rather than for hoping.

Chinese New Year is the recurring trap here. Orders for spring events routinely get planned into the shutdown, and no amount of goodwill from the factory recovers weeks of closed production.

Practical order discipline

Confirm what the item legally is before you price it. Put the compliance evidence, whose name it must be in, and the branding position into the specification.

Approve a printed pre-production sample, inspect before shipment including print position and colour against the approved sample, and check any required markings and warnings.

And keep the file. If you are supplying a client, the evidence you can produce is what protects the relationship when someone asks a question you did not anticipate.