A precipitous drop in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) led to Top 40 distributor BAMKO’s (asi/131431) total second-quarter sales declining to nearly $48.68 million, a 35% drop compared to the same three-month period the prior year.

Still, the topline number belied the fact that BAMKO’s sales of traditional promotional products skyrocketed 85% year over year during 2021’s Q2 to $47.73 million, reflecting a strong rebound in demand from the second quarter of 2020 when COVID-related societal shutdowns obliterated promo-specific sales. The Q2 performance of promo product sales in particular also bested 2021’s first quarter, when such sales were about $44.65 million.

“This represented BAMKO’s third consecutive quarter of record quarterly sales of core promotional products,” said Michael Benstock, CEO of Superior Group of Companies, BAMKO’s parent company.

More promo-specific growth could be forthcoming. “BAMKO finished the quarter with the largest backlog of sales in the history of the segment, with the backlog comprised of 99.6% of core promotional products,” Benstock said.

Nonetheless, the rise in Q2 promo product revenue was insufficient to offset the fact that BAMKO’s second quarter 2021 PPE business was $948,000 compared to nearly $50 million the year prior.

BAMKO leveraged its global supply network to jump into the PPE game early and was able to engineer high-volume sales of the products during the initial months of COVID-19 and later in 2020.

Still, amid mass vaccinations, the traditional PPE supply chain catching up and loosening mask mandates, the market for PPE business dwindled for BAMKO and other promo distributors in this year’s second quarter. Such demand could potentially increase, at least to a degree, during the third and fourth quarters given new masking guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and the return of mask mandates in some areas of the country, as ASI Media has reported.

With the Delta variant reportedly on the rise and mask mandates back on the table, will PPE demand return to the #promoproducts industry? Some think so, at least to an extent: https://t.co/G9Hj8leF2K Interesting report via @JCorr_ASI @Melissa_ASI @asicentral @ASI_MBell

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) July 27, 2021

For the first six months of 2021, BAMKO’s total global sales have increased nearly 6% to $107.55 million.  

Overall, Superior Group of Companies’ second quarter sales decreased almost 18% year over year to $130.8 million. Again, a drop in PPE demand was to blame, as sales excluding PPE business were up 23.1%.

In Q2 2021, Superior’s net income was $4.6 million or $0.28 per diluted share compared to $15.2 million, or $1.00 per diluted share for the second quarter of 2020. In addition to lower total sales, charges related to the termination of two noncontributory qualified defined benefit pension plans weighed down earnings.

Looking ahead, Benstock is optimistic.

“We’re extremely excited by the exceptional momentum of our core businesses, which face the most attractive outlook in our company’s history,” he said. “We are now at a stage where we believe that sales of any significant amount of crisis PPE is behind us, and we’re laser focused on our core products and services. Excluding the impact of PPE sales, we saw tremendous growth.”

With reported 2020 North American sales of $193.9 million, BAMKO ranked 11^th on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest distributors in the promotional products industry.