these leading companies, allowing competitors of any size to understand and replicate the top companies’ successes. Additionally, all companies will have the opportunity to take the same surveys that help to underpin the PPAI 100 rankings, and PPAI Media will release those aggregate findings later in the year so that firms of all sizes will be able to understand how they compare to their peers in key areas. Savvy challengers will mine the rankings and content for ways to emulate the best practices that have made the PPAI 100 companies so successful. Armed with this information in 2023 and even more data in the years to come, the industry will have the opportunity to experience a virtuous cycle of collective progress. Creating PPAI 100 PPAI Media spent more than a year studying what defines a top company in the modern promotional products industry. As we solicited industry feedback and held internal debates, one idea came to the forefront again and again: It’s about more than last year’s top line. To be called a leader in the industry, a company should be forward-looking and well situated for the future. Its holistic strength and positive positioning should be a model to competitors large and small. With this idea in mind, PPAI Media went to work identifying tangible metrics that would encapsulate the most admirable traits of a leading company in promotional products or any industry. Numerous categories and scoring scenarios were modeled by the Association’s research staff, which ultimately unlocked a proprietary scoring rubric that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of one distributor to another and one supplier to another. As companies closed their books on 2022 – a record $25.5 billion year for the industry – PPAI began to contact companies with potential to rank among the 50 leading suppliers and 50 leading distributors based on available data. Although much of the information inherent to scoring the program and benchmarking the leaders was previously available to PPAI, some is more private for companies. Surveys were sent this spring to nearly 200 companies, helping PPAI understand their business fundamentals and adherence to best practices in both the technology and corporate responsibility categories. Taken alongside data already at hand, each company’s answers provided insights on whether it belonged among the PPAI 100, and where it should rank. While these categories and scoring methods are crucial to understanding the top companies in the industry for 2023, they may not all be as valuable in future years. PPAI Media will evaluate the categories and scoring system each year to make sure that they create the most relevant picture of the leaders in promotional products. *** The first-ever PPAI 100 rankings will be unveiled to attendees at North American Leadership Conference in Washington, June 4-6, and published later in June via PPAI Media online. The full list will be included in the upcoming July issue of PPAI Magazine, alongside the annual Greatest Companies To Work For special report Ellis is the publisher and editor-in-chief at PPAI PPAI 100 | Must Read 3 PPAI 100 distributors average 16% of earnings from their top three clients. PPAI 100 suppliers ship 97% of orders “on time.” 4 At PPAI 100 companies, 1 in 4 workers (nonfactory) is under the age of 30. 5 The gross profit margin for PPAI 100 distributors is 34%. For suppliers it is 35%. PPAI • JUNE 2023 • 51
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