Dave Roberts at Power Sales Sees Continued Growth, Personalization and Some Tariff Impact
This interview is part of RRN’s continuing series of interviews with industry leaders on the latest Incentive, Reward, and Recognition trends.Click here for EEA sponsors; here to subscribe, and here for an RRN media kit.
Continued growth, more emphasis on customization and personalization, continued technology advances, and tariffs top the trends Dave Roberts sees for his company’s incentive, rewards, and recognition business in 2025. Roberts is Principal of Power Sales, one of the world’s largest master fulfillment companies with two warehouses in Lenexa, KS, totaling about 214,000 square feet.
Roberts expects another year of steady growth coming both from the industry’s leading incentive, recognition, rewards, and loyalty companies, and from the growing number of promotional distributors active in the market. This in turn may explain why his company continues to see growth in demand for customization, personalization, and kitting. “We have had some big programs in customization. We now have a UV printer, enabling us to offer more color, definition, and options.” He estimates that customized products account for about 10% of the company’s business today.
Increasing advances in technology, he says, continue to enhance not only speed of shipments out of the warehouse but also a big reduction in back orders, which used to be a significant issue in the merchandise catalog business, he adds.
Perhaps the biggest news for the industry this year will be tariffs. “We know they are coming. We’re increasing inventories a bit, but there are limits to how much you can do that.” As of February 2025, the biggest impacts, he says, will be on goods from China, some of which fall under the new 10% tariff increase, and Mexico, if tariffs are imposed after the recently announced 30-day cooling off period. “A lot of televisions are manufactured there,” he notes. He sees less impact should the tariffs on Canada be imposed, as fewer consumer products used in the IRR market originate there.Tariffs, he explained are based on the cost of goods purchased from China or other countries, not on their cost in the US. “So, if we pay $100 and the supplier paid $62, the tariff is on the $62, or $6.20, not $10. We do not know how much the vendors will raise their prices, because some of it will depend upon competitive pressures from brands made outside of China, which won’t be affected by the tariffs. “Companies can’t just automatically raise their prices as they are not living in a competitive vacuum.”
Wholesalers like his company, he says, will have to pass on cost increases should they come. “We can’t do it item by item. We’ll take our best shot from a cost-average standpoint and try to give as much notice as we can. No one wants to pay more.”
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