Counselor Top 40 firm 4imprint (asi/197045) is forecasting that its total global revenue will rise on an annual basis in 2024 but it appears the rate of growth will be lower than in 2023 – a reality that would mark the second year in a row in which the promotional products industry’s largest distributor experienced a deceleration in sales expansion.

In a financial performance update issued Nov. 12, the publicly traded company said that revenue for full-year 2024 should be about $1.37 billion – an approximate 3% increase over 2023. 4imprint didn’t specify sales in North America, but the United Kingdom-based company generates the vast majority of its business in the United States and Canada. 4imprint’s main operational center, which it recently completed expanding, is in Wisconsin.

While rising sales are welcomed, the projected 3% growth rate is below the 16% annual year-over-year sales rise that 4imprint registered in 2023 and a far cry from 2022’s 45% annual basis growth. In 2022, 4imprint, like other industry firms, benefited from a strong bounceback in end-client spending following a fallow period for sales endured during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why the slower single-digit growth for 2024? Marketplace headwinds, said 4imprint.

“The promotional products industry in our primary North American market has continued to present a challenging trading backdrop,” the firm said in its update. “Continuing uncertainty around economic conditions has translated into generally weaker levels of corporate confidence, compounded by specific macro factors over which [4imprint] has no control, including elevated interest rates, severe weather events and the distraction arising from the U.S. election cycle.”

Nonetheless, 4imprint set a North American promo industry sales record for revenue in 2023. And, with any revenue rise in 2024, the firm would at the very least be in the running to set another industry record, depending of course on how other leading promo distributors perform.

BOOM! ASI Research shows #promoproducts distributors had their best quarter in over a year in Q3. What's in store for Q4? Despite struggles earlier this year, is a new annual record in reach? Answers:https://t.co/VeJutMYRzA

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) October 29, 2024

Furthermore, 4imprint said in its trading update that before-tax profit is expected to be more than $150 million, an approximately 6.5% year-over-year increase. While orders from new customers decreased 9% through the first 10 months of 2024, 4imprint’s overall order count rose 2%, thanks to a greater number of orders from existing customers.

“Combined with strong average order values at 2% above prior year, overall order revenue [for the first 10 months of 2024] was 4% above the same time period in 2023,” 4imprint said.

So far this year, 4imprint has engineered a gross profit margin of about 32%. At the end of October, 4imprint had a cash balance of $137 million.

ASI Research shows that promo products distributors’ sales collectively declined 0.9% on average in the first quarter of 2024, to be followed by average annual-basis growth of 1.3% in Q2 and 4.2% in Q4, an upward trajectory that has put the industry potentially on path to achieve a new annual sales record. The industry growth in recent quarters has come despite the challenges to which 4imprint alluded – and the firm itself has been part of propelling the rise.

“Our experience is that less buoyant economic conditions represent a market share opportunity for 4imprint, as our financial strength allows us to keep investing in the business and to take full advantage of the market recovery when it arrives,” the firm’s board of directors said. “The board remains very confident in the group’s strategy, positioning and prospects.”

Based on reported 2023 North American promotional product sales of $1,302.6 billion, 4imprint ranked first on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest distributors in the industry.