Total Merchandise

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Total Merchandise is celebrating 18 years in business and 15 as a BPMA member. Product Media hears its story UP

People find their way to the promotional merchandise sector from a variety of intriguing routes, and none more so than Jason O’Connor, co-founder of award-winning supplier Total Merchandise.

The spare bedroom origins of the company may be common for many startups in the sector, but his background as a DJ and music magazine publisher is slightly more exotic.

Having bought merchandise for his own business, O’Connor, and fellow Total Merchandise founders David Stoddart and Michelle Rae Stoddart, perceived an opening.

“We were quite green and had no preconceived ideas,” he admits from the company’s Colchester offices. “It was a huge, exciting learning curve.”

Back in 2004, when Total Merchandise founded, this lack of knowledge, or perhaps respect for received wisdom, turned out to be something of a benefit as the business was not set in its ways from the start.

This resulted in an approach which was, at the time, quite unique within the industry.

He describes Total Merchandise as aggressive on price. “It’s a competitive industry, and we like to lead the way,” he says.

The company also pursued a singular approach to not selling a particular catalogue of goods but to picking its own products and developing its own website.

“We wanted complete control of what we do in terms of what we sell and its pricing. You choose where you can be most competitive and that’s where we have an edge,” he says. “Now lots of businesses are doing it – not just in merchandise but more widely, like the retail discounters. ”

Price on its own is not enough, he admits, and the company does not want to fall short on areas such as customer service or product knowledge.

“Price is still the main driver for getting people through the door, but you need to offer more if you want to get their future orders,” he maintains.

Now celebrating its 18th year in business, and its 15th as a BPMA member, O’Connor says that merchandise buyers now have consumer level expectations.

“It’s the Amazon-model. They want it online and faster and they don’t want to be sold to. People have shifted towards that.”

He likens the shift to Total Merchandise’s digital approach, to Clive Sinclair’s C5. “Everyone thought it was nuts at the time but now we have scooters for hire on street corners. Some ideas take time to find their place. Buying patterns in merchandise have shifted to our way of doing things on the internet.”

Given the focus online when it comes to promotion, O’Connor theorises that social media, with its algorithms and adverts, doesn’t have a huge part to play in the world of promo, beyond offering a likeworthy window front. While he agrees that maintaining an active presence is important, he doesn’t believe that many would-be clients turn to the likes of Twitter and Instagram for merchandise inspiration.

“It’s started to become white noise,” he says. “The audience is there, but for merchandise it doesn’t work in the same way. Our customers don’t go on Facebook to look for pens.”

Like all businesses, Total Merchandise was hit hard by the pandemic. However, it gave the three founders and their team a chance to take stock and think ahead to the future.

“In a lot of ways, we came out of it with a renewed sense of purpose. We have more plans now than ever,” he says.

The team is looking at tech products as a big growth area and wants to make it even easier for buyers to transact with the company by improving its processes and online offering. An internal art department has also been introduced, which, due to its speed and efficiency, is already proving hugely popular with clients.

“There will also be radical changes to the website in the next couple of months,” he says.

An advocate of giving back, Total Merchandise has donated products worth tens of thousands to charities across the UK over the years, including Little Haven’s Hospice and WellChild.

As part of the company’s 18th birthday celebration, it is planning to donate £1,800 to EACH (East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices), a local charity.

From being start-up outsiders, Total Merchandise is now firmly one of the mainstays of the British merchandise industry. It was named BPMA distributor of the year (£5m+) at the 2020 awards and has scored a hat-trick of gongs in the Sourcing City’s Distributor of the Year awards over the last three years.

With business really starting to come back from about mid-July last year, according to O’Connor, he and his co-founders are optimistic about the future of the company. The best is yet to come, he predicts.