News January 24, 2025
3M/Promotional Markets’ Sales Reportedly Dropped About 3% in 2024
Still, the Counselor Top 40 supplier is excited about new initiatives for 2025, including its reentry into the European promotional products marketplace.
Key Takeaways
• Down a Bit: Counselor Top 40 supplier 3M/Promotional Markets’ (asi/91240) sales dropped approximately 3% in 2024 compared to 2023.
• Reasons for the Retreat: Factors included a post-COVID recovery correction and broader marketplace challenges.
• Optimism: The firm is excited about its reentry into the United Kingdom and European Union promo markets in 2025.
Sales slipped for Counselor Top 40 supplier 3M/Promotional Markets (asi/91240) in 2024.
Misty Friedrichs, contract national sales manager for the Minnesota-based firm, told ASI Media that revenue was approximately 3% lower in 2024 than 2025.
More specifics weren’t available at this time, Friedrichs said, due to how publicly traded parent company 3M addresses the supplier’s financials in its quarterly reports.
Last year, 3M/Promotional Markets reported that 2023 North American promo sales were $108.8 million, good enough to rank the firm 17th on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest suppliers in the industry. A 3% drop on that tally would put 2024 revenue roughly around $105.5 million.
A number of factors appear to have been behind the decline, according to Friedrichs.
Those include a slight post-COVID recovery correction. For 3M/Promotional Products, 2022 and 2023 were strong bounceback years from pandemic challenges, making 2023 in particular a hard comparative to match or exceed. “As we settle back into a more normal sales cycle, it will look a little lower compared to the last couple of years,” Friedrichs told ASI Media in discussing previous quarterly results.
Another factor was broader marketplace challenges, which in 2024 included inflation battles, a tumultuous presidential election and end-buyer uncertainty over the direction of their businesses and the economy.
Overall, promotional products distributors engineered a 1.8% annual sales increase in 2024 – good enough for a new industry record but slower than the pace of inflation and not the robust revenue upswing for which many merch executives had hoped.
Still, 3M/Promotional Markets, like promo as a whole, is feeling more optimistic about 2025.
For one thing, the supplier is excited to again be selling its Post-it Custom Printed Products in the United Kingdom and European Union after being out of those markets for a decade. Friedrichs was in attendance at PSI, promo’s largest European trade show, this month as part of the relaunch of the brand in Europe.
3M/Promotional Products is part of publicly traded conglomerate 3M, which reported its full-year 2024 financial results on Jan. 21. The parent corporation’s business-wide full-year sales were reportedly down 0.1% in 2024 compared to 2023, coming in at $24.6 billion.