The Competitive Advantage of Community

Why openly sharing ideas might be the smartest competitive move.

Ask anyone in the promotional products industry what the key to success is, and most will say the same thing: relationships. Yet it's striking how long our industry has spent deeply distrusting one another. The irony is hard to miss.

When I first started in branded merchandise way back in 2000, the prevailing philosophy - especially on the distributor side - was simple: guard everything. Any information was treated like nuclear launch codes. If someone inquired how you approached something - pricing, strategy, client acquisition, or even where to source a particular product - the instinct wasn’t to share, it was to deflect. The assumption behind it all was that everyone else was the competition.

To be fair, that thinking wasn’t entirely irrational, especially when you consider that distributors in the branded merchandise space sell the same products, from the same suppliers, at roughly the same prices, to the same audience. When you strip the business down to bare bones, the promotional products industry can look like a giant game of musical chairs where everyone is scrambling for the same seat.

However, there’s a bit of irony in that approach, as the prevailing mindset didn’t make the distributors stronger; it made them stagnant.

When people hoard ideas and operate in isolation, innovation grinds to a screeching halt because the same strategies get recycled, common mistakes are repeated, and the same thinking gets reinforced, regardless of its efficacy. Over time, secrecy didn’t create a competitive advantage. In fact, it did quite the opposite and created a ceiling.

Fortunately, over the past decade or so, something has started to shift, and it’s been one of the healthiest changes I’ve seen in our shared industry.

A new generation of promotional professionals, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, has brought a very different mindset with them and opened the door for forward-thinking Gen Xers and Boomers to think differently as well. Instead of assuming every other distributor is an enemy combatant, they’ve embraced something much more conducive to success: community. They understand it’s about sharing ideas openly, talking about what’s working and what isn’t, and collaborating on solutions to common problems, rather than pretending they’re the only ones dealing with them.

What’s really fascinating about the people, regardless of age, who choose to lean into this mindset is that they often end up being the most successful. They realize that collaboration doesn’t weaken competition as much as it sharpens it.

Surrounding yourself with smart, open people accelerates improvement. By learning from their experiments and missteps, and discovering approaches you wouldn’t have found alone, you can often jump ahead without years of trial and error.

In other words, open collaboration is an accelerator, not a disadvantage.

I’ve experienced this more times than I can count. Some of the most valuable insights I’ve gained over the years didn’t come from formal education or industry publications. They came from conversations with peers who were generous enough to share what they were seeing in their own businesses. Those conversations made me better, and I’d like to think the exchange worked both ways.

Let’s be crystal clear about something: community doesn’t eliminate the competitive nature of the industry, and frankly, it shouldn’t. Competition is healthy because it forces us to improve, think differently, and perform at a higher level. The key here is understanding there’s an enormous difference between competition and isolation. One pushes your business forward while the other quietly holds it back.

No matter how collaborative our industry becomes, everyone is still running their own race. You must still earn your clients, deliver quality work, and build a standalone business. Community doesn’t replace responsibility; it strengthens it.

When people share ideas, constructively challenge each other, and support growth, the whole industry rises. That shared progress might be our real competitive advantage.

So, here’s a simple challenge: before the week is out, share one meaningful insight lesson you’ve learned with a peer in the industry. It could be a strategy that worked, a mistake you’ve learned from, or a resource you found valuable. Maybe that strategy happens through the PromoKitchen mentoring program, or perhaps it’s something you post in the Promotional Products Professionals Facebook community. Regardless of where this happens, the truth is that the more we share what we know, the more competitive we all become.