The promotional products industry’s pivot to selling personal protective equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus pandemic continued in June, according to new exclusive data from ASI.

Six of the top 10 search terms in ESP, ASI’s database of products from around the promo industry, were tied to PPE or related health-protecting items. Various terms for face coverings, hand sanitizer and no-touch tools for doing things like opening doors all appeared in the top 10. However, so did traditional industry items like pens, water bottles, mugs and Koozies.

May 2019 to June 2020 Leading Search Terms

“PPE products are still dominant forces in the industry, but June saw a return of traditional promo product leaders to the mix, a sign that things were improving and moving to whatever our next normal is,” said Nathaniel Kucsma, ASI’s executive director of research and corporate marketing.

The data indicated somewhat of a return to normalization in promo products demand last month. Cooling towel, Koozie and Yeti tumbler were among the search terms that experienced the biggest increases in June 2020 over May 2020, with some of that likely being driven by end-user demand for summer season products. Meanwhile, for the first time since the pandemic began, searches for PPE items decreased: face mask dropped 37%, hand sanitizer was down 27% and neck gaiter declined 26%.

A byproduct of the PPE craze, bandannas have seen a rise in popularity. There have been 231 different search terms used for bandannas (or bandanas in some cases) in ESP this year. “Dog bandana” is the fourth ranked search term, followed by “pet bandanas.”

For the first six months of 2020, hand sanitizer, face masks and pens were the most-searched terms in ESP. Three of the year’s top 10 search terms relate to face coverings – face mask, mask and bandanna. Mask and water bottles round out the year’s top five ESP product searches through June 30.