Our friends at Inkhead developed an infographic highlighting the year’s top 13 promotional product trends, which might help with your purchasing decisions as you make plans for the remainder of the year.

The must-have promotional items of 2013 include:

Drinkware and Food Containers

With a cultural focus away from disposables and healthier living, everybody seems to be on the drinkware and container bandwagon. Hot items this year include the following in the drinkware category,

• Infuser Drinkware (including flavor-infusing water bottles)
• Contigo Drinkware (including spill-proof coffee tumblers and water bottles)
• Tervis Tumblers
• Filtered Drinkware and branded food containers are also continue to be a strong favorite.
• Tailgating Supplies

Pretty much always a favorite with our sports-minded society, tailgating supplies of all kind are popular, especially branded coolers. And if they have wheels, so much the better.

Apparel

Apparel is always a big seller and this year, we’re seeing a lot of the following as hot items, and sunglasses are also high on the list of must-have items.

• Poly/Cotton Apparel
• Trimark Apparel
• Camouflage Prints
• Sunglasses

Tech Gadgets

Tech gadgets continue to be strong in the promotional industry and that’s probably not changing any time soon. The most popular items include:

• Mobile Accessories
• Earbuds
• Carrying Cases
• USB Drives

And lastly, notice that full color products are popular with customers. Visually enticing messages and eye-catching designs are key, so if it’s time to revisit your promotional product inventory, take a look to see how you can incorporate full-color elements into the mix.

Here’s the Inkhead infographic so you can check it out.

We’d love to hear from you, our industry trend-spotters. Do Inkhead’s findings align with what you’re seeing in the marketplace? And are there any other hot promotional products that didn’t make this list? If so, what are your favorites?

Image by rosscrawford1 via Creative Commons

The deal, which was drafted by Industriall and the UNI Global Union, has attracted signatures from a growing number of retail companies, including Hennes & Mauritz, Inditex, Benetton, Primark, Mango and C&A. As part of the agreement, companies that buy clothes from factories in Bangladesh must commission independent safety inspections and pay for building repairs. For those who sign the agreement and don’t abide by the terms, the deal can be enforced through arbitration and the courts.

Walmart has declined to sign the agreement because “it does not want to agree to the dispute resolution mechanisms it contains,” as reported by the Financial Times.

Instead, Walmart has introduced its own safety plan and said “it would reconsider its position on the broader deal if its concerns were addressed,” according to the FT. The retailer agrees with the bulk of the proposal, but is concerned about requirements contained in the agreement that include “governance and dispute resolution mechanisms” that Walmart says are “unnecessary to achieve fire and safety goals,” writes the FT’s Barney Jopson.

Walmart says its plan will achieve results more quickly and plans to conduct safety inspections of all 279 factories that produce goods for it within the next six months. The company also plans to publish the results, citing transparency as “the ultimate accountability mechanism” in an interview with the FT.

We’re interested to see if Walmart follows through on its promise. We agree that transparency is an important part of the safety and compliance process, but only if it actually happens—otherwise, empty promises do nothing to advance the guidelines and reforms that the Bangladesh garment industry (not to mention the industry in other countries) so desperately needs.

What do you think of Walmart’s stance? Should they have signed the existing agreement, or are they right to implement their own plan?

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Held from August 14-15, the PPAI Product Safety Summit offers a combination of keynote presentations and smaller sessions designed to explore product safety developments and best practices that you can apply to your own product process and safety strategy. You’ll hear from industry thought leaders, as well as representatives from product safety labs and product certification groups, to give you a comprehensive view of product safety and compliance and why it’s a critical area of focus in today’s marketplace.

The summit will begin directly after the North American Leadership Conference on August 13^th, 2013 and will feature keynote speaker Neal Cohen, CPSC. Neal is the current Small Business Ombudsman at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and works with the CPSC to provide educational and outreach materials to the CPSC-regulated industry community.

Interested in a closer look at the summit and why you should consider attending? Check out this video from PPAI:

Business trends may come and go—but product safety and compliance aren’t among them. As PPAI says, “Corporate social responsibility and compliance aren’t the future or a fad. Your clients expect compliance now.”

Seating is limited at the summit, so be sure to register online and secure your spot now. And once you’re registered, check out PPAI’s discounts on hotels and airfare. We’re already packing our bags for the Windy City. Join us, won’t you?

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“The researchers found that gifts were far more motivating to short-term employees than unexpected cash bonuses, effectively paying for themselves by improving productivity,” writes Ray Fisman for Harvard Business Review.

During the study, researchers gathered a group of students to catalog books at a German university’s economics library. The half-day task paid an advertised rate of 12 euros/hour. Before the work began, however, some students were told they’d get an unexpected seven-euro bonus. Another group received a gift-wrapped water bottle. And a third group didn’t receive any bonus.

The researchers found that the cash bonus didn’t change the speed or accuracy with which the students completed their work. In the group that received the free bottle, however, their data entry rate increased by 25 percent, which Fisman writes is a “productivity increase that more than offset the cost of the bottle itself.”

If you’re considering gifts for your employees, a gift-wrapped water bottle isn’t necessarily the key—instead, it’s the act of giving, which is typically perceived as more meaningful (and, inherently, more valuable), than cash. Additionally, giving gifts may make employees feel that they’re a more integral part of the company, which can result in increased productivity and loyalty.

“Even the smallest gesture of kindness that shows they’re part of an organization that actually cares can give them purpose—and that leads to motivation,” Fisman writes.

Have you given your employees gifts? Do you think they’d prefer a gift over a cash bonus, or does your experience conflict with the research findings?

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The death toll has surpassed 800, and about 2,500 people were injured. Even more appalling are indications that this devastating event could have been prevented.

“Workers said they had hesitated to go into the building on Wednesday morning because it had developed such large cracks a day earlier that it even drew the attention of local news channels,” as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle via the AP. “On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir said the building had violated construction codes and ‘the culprits would be punished.’”

Several textile businesses were located in the building, including Phantom Apparels Ltd., New Wave Style Ltd., New Wave Bottoms Ltd. and New Wave Brothers Ltd. The AP reported that the companies made clothing for major brands like The Children’s Place, Dress Barn and Primark, a connection that has sent the companies scrambling to cover their tracks.

Jane Singer, a spokeswoman for The Children’s Place, said in a statement that, “while one of the garment factories located in the building complex has produced apparel for The Children’s Place, none of our product was in production at the time of this accident.”

The tragedy is a scenario that continues to mar the industry and put workers in unnecessary danger, often resulting in lost lives. And it’s one that highlights the critical and ongoing need for increased safety procedures, including processes like QCA Accreditation, to help minimize these types of incidents. The risk of potential damage to a brand from tragedies like this is a threat to the promotional products industry in general. Without processes in place, like those from accredited QCA suppliers, end-users of promotional products are unsure of their origin. They may turn away from using promotional products to items with less risk—like gift cards. The risk to the long-term sustainability of the industry is real.

In the wake of the collapse, American Apparel CEO Dov Charney had strong words for those in the apparel industry.

“The apparel industry’s relentless and blind pursuit of the lowest possible wages cannot be sustained over time, ethically or fiscally,” Charney wrote in a letter published on American Apparel’s website. “As labor and transportation costs increase worldwide, exploitation will not only be morally offensive and dated, it will not even be financially viable.”

If garment and promotional product companies don’t seek to improve safety, consumers will—and they’ll speak not only with their mouths, but also their wallets.

“The good news is, is that we can put our money where our mouth is,” writes Andrea Ayres-Deets for PolicyMic. “We can also use social media to demand that companies we purchase goods from demand more from their suppliers. At the very least we can educate ourselves on where our goods come from.”

Do stories like the Bangladesh building collapse prompt you to reexamine your own safety policies and procedures? What sort of parameters would you recommend to help protect workers and facilities?

Image via CNN