The promotional merchandise sector has faced growing scrutiny over its supply chain ethics for the past several years, and 2025 has seen that scrutiny intensify. Major corporate clients — particularly in financial services, professional services and consumer brands — are now conducting meaningful due diligence on the ethical credentials of their promotional merchandise suppliers as part of their broader supply chain sustainability programmes. This is creating genuine demand for senior talent with supply chain compliance and sustainability expertise that the sector simply hasn’t required at scale before.
What’s Driving the Change
The primary driver is corporate sustainability commitments. Large organisations that have made public commitments on modern slavery, supply chain transparency, environmental sustainability and responsible sourcing are increasingly applying those commitments to their promotional merchandise spend — historically a part of the supply chain that has received relatively little scrutiny. When a major bank announces a net-zero commitment, its procurement team is eventually going to look at every item in the corporate gift catalogue and ask where it came from, how it was made, and what happens to it at the end of its life.
The secondary driver is regulation. The UK Modern Slavery Act requirements have teeth in the promotional merchandise supply chain, particularly for businesses sourcing from Asia. And the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive will create additional compliance obligations for businesses with European clients or operations.
What This Means for Talent
Promotional merchandise businesses that want to serve major corporate clients are increasingly hiring for supply chain compliance knowledge alongside commercial capability. Supplier Relationship Directors, Compliance Managers and Head of Sustainability roles that didn’t exist five years ago are now live requirements at businesses that are serious about winning and retaining corporate accounts.
The challenge is that experienced supply chain compliance professionals with specific knowledge of the promotional merchandise supply chain — factories in China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam; the testing and certification landscape; import compliance — are genuinely scarce. Many of the available candidates have compliance experience in adjacent sectors (FMCG, retail, fashion) without specific promotional merchandise knowledge, and must be assessed for their ability to transfer that knowledge.
We’re actively working on supply chain compliance appointments in the promotional merchandise sector. If you’re building capability in this area, we’d welcome a conversation.
