White Paper No.03 – Sourcing City

White Paper | 1 July 2026 | White Paper No. 03

Every Click Through Enquiry on Sourcing City represents a professional distributor actively selecting a product to present to a real customer. Not a survey response. Not a supplier’s stocking recommendation. A live purchasing decision. In 2025, there were 675,000 of them.

Our new white paper analyses all of it. There is no sample, no weighting, no interpolation. The data is the market. What distributors clicked is what distributors bought, planned, and pitched. The signal is direct.

The classics are not fading — they are accelerating

The first thing the data tells you is that the promo industry’s core categories are not under threat. They are strengthening. The products that built this industry are drawing more attention than ever from distributors who know what works.

+19.7%

Pens

Year on year, 2025

+11.1%

Bags

Year on year, 2025

+23.0%

Sports Drink Bottles

Year on year, 2025

These are not niche products finding a moment. These are the volume categories — the ones every distributor stocks, knows, and sells. Their growth tells you that the market is doubling down on what it understands rather than chasing alternatives.

The market is not diversifying away from its core categories. It is doubling down on them.

The edges are moving fast

Alongside the classics, a second pattern is visible: a cluster of products that have followed people out of the office and into their daily lives. Power Banks. Fans. Chargers. These are utility items people reach for every day — and distributors are reaching for them in increasing numbers.

Category | Segment | YoY Growth
Power Banks | Technology | +37.0%
Fans | Lifestyle | +35.9%
Sports Drink Bottles | Drinkware | +23.0%
Chargers | Technology | +20.4%
Pens | Writing Instruments | +19.7%
Sports Items | Sport and Leisure | +19.2%
Bags | Bags and Luggage | +11.1%

Source: Sourcing City platform CT Enquiry data, year ending 2025.

Sustainability is the baseline, not the story

Eco Friendly Ideas: three years at the top

130,069

CT Enquiries in 2025, up 15% year on year. Eco Friendly Ideas has led every themed group ranking for three consecutive years. That is not a trend. That is the baseline. Any distributor still treating sustainability as an optional extra is working with an outdated picture of what their clients expect.

The white paper covers this in detail: what the top-ranked themed groups look like, how eco performance breaks down by sub-category, and what the 2026 trajectory suggests. The data does not moralise. It reports what distributors are selecting — and eco products are consistently and substantially at the top.

Sport is perfectly timed

With the FIFA World Cup under way and Wimbledon about to begin, the timing of this paper is not coincidental. Sports Items grew 19.2% in 2025 and the 2026 data — drawn from six months of live platform activity — forecasts a further 9.8% on top. The category is in its moment. Distributors pitching sports-themed campaigns right now are working with one of the fastest-growing segments on the platform.

Published on the midpoint of 2026 — deliberately

We are publishing on 1 July. Half of 2026 has already happened. The 2026 signals in this paper are not projections built from last year’s estimates. They are observations drawn from six months of live platform activity, annualised against a consistent methodology. By the time you read this, the market has already started telling you what it wants.

A January publication would look back. A July publication looks both ways: confirming what 2025 delivered, and showing what the first half of 2026 is already doing.

Who this paper is for

White Paper No. 03 is written for distributors. It is also free, open access, and available to anyone in the promotional merchandise trade. If you work in this industry — as a distributor, supplier, or somewhere in between — the data in here will be relevant to conversations you are having right now.

Suppliers will find it useful too. The ranked product data shows where distributor attention is concentrating. The themed group performance shows which ranges are being actively sought. It is a different kind of intelligence from your own sales data, because it shows demand before it becomes an order.

Read White Paper No. 03

Free and open access. No registration required.

Read the White Paper | Full White Papers Library

Sourcing City White Paper Series

No. 01 — Every Second Counts | No. 02 — The Merch Ecosystem | No. 03 — 675,000 Buying Decisions | No. 04 — The Intelligent Distributor