About Hambleside Merchandise

The Hambleside Merchandise Journey

Established in 1974, Hambleside Group was a founding member of the PAGE Partnership buying group and a trailblazer in establishing the vibrant sector we enjoy today.  Starting out selling promotional products as part of the wider group activities, the promotional team grow from strength to strength. With steady growth as the sector blossomed, a management team was established and started to operate as a company within the group; until the decision was made to separate into its own trading entity.

Hambleside Merchandise was born in 2003, under the trading name Hambleside Business Gift Solutions. As part of the larger Hambleside Group, the team were originally based in Petersfield, Hampshire; before strong growth demanded a move to larger offices just outside of Portsmouth in 2008.

With a strong team of dedicated account managers, Hambleside grow from strength to strength. With a dedicated team developing a deep understanding of the promotional merchandise industry, it has been an exciting couple of decades, helping develop the industry into what it is today.

Terminology has changed over the years, but we have retained our core ethos of ensuring exceptional product awareness, outstanding branding, and unrivalled customer service which have won us many industry and consumer awards over the years.

Regular attendees at trade shows, the focus started in the corporate merchandise area when the industry used the terms corporate gifts and promotional merchandise. By 2009, we had become a leading supplier within the education merchandise sector, winning a number of framework contract, which we still remain within now. The term merchandise started to overtaking business gifts as the surge to online picked up. In response, the rebranding to Hambleside Merchandise was completed in 2012.

Driven by the customer base, we started to see the rise of the term branded merchandise start to accelerate from 2014, where branded products are now the predominant term used within the sector.

From late 2017, the terms “branded merch” or just “merch” has been driven from the youtuber phenomenon of content creators developing sales channels to sell merch direct to viewers. With the exponential growth of “YouTuber merch”, we have been involved in some really exciting projects over the years and we now manage a large number of promotional products webshops.

To ensure we have the capability to supply both bulk and no minimum order quantities we made significant investments in our inhouse custom printing and branded clothing capabilities in 2018. This has given us the ability to respond rapidly to short notice demands and allows us to deliver to the needs of our customers.