Promotional products (aka branded merch or swag) is a $27+ billion industry in North America served by more than 20,000 distributors that’s highly competitive and operationally complex.

Prodigy Commerce, a well-established, Shopify-like, B2C eCommerce platform, was approached by a top 100 promotional products distributor to extend its platform to serve this unique B2B industry.

Programmatic business is an important element of the promotional products industry for distributors since it provides a persistent presence for their clients (brands) to sell or provide company branded merchandise to their employees and business partners via Company, Pop-Up, Redemption, and POD Stores.

Three Keys to Success – Significant Pain Points for Distributors

Since distributors earn the margin on product sales and are responsible for the entire supply chain, and for building and maintaining their clients’ Stores, the keys to success are:

• Scale – Volume is the goal. A distributor’s sales force needs modern tools and technology to win new clients and expand those relationships.
• Efficiency – Order processing should just happen. Eliminate manual work so everyone can focus on generating revenue.
• Cost Control – Gross margins are thin with only 5 – 10% dropping to the bottom line. Efficiency is part of the solution, but reducing fixed costs is equally important.

Prodigy Commerce Solves All the Pain Points

Cost Savings

There is a wide range of Store building solutions. Some are embedded in CRM/ERP systems like commonsku’s Shops, SAGE’s Stores, Antera’s Aether, Facilisgroup’s Commercio, or NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce. Others are industry-specific, standalone products like BrightStores, eBlox, Orderforge, Chipply, Liftoff, OMG, and WebJaguar. Many are underpowered and/or use old technology and all are very expensive, charging some combination of:

• License/set-up fees
• Monthly subscription/hosting fees
• Transaction fees based on cart total
• Per order fees
• API fees
• Additional fees for advanced features and integrations
• Credit card processing fees

That’s a lot of fees! Now, let’s compare Prodigy’s pricing to two long-standing solutions that came together via acquisition a few years ago, BrightStores and OMG.

Fee
License fee (one time)	$2,999	$0
Hosting fee (per month per store)	$199	$20
Transaction fee*	3.95%	0.00%
Per order fees**	Limited to 50 orders per month per store	Unlimited
API fees***	Up to 30,000 hits per month per store	Unlimited
Advanced SAML SSO	$3,500 setup fee per store, then $99 per month per store	Included for free
Additional fees****	6 more features and integrations available	All included for free
Credit card processing fees	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30

• 
  BrightStores
• 
  Prodigy

Fee
License fee (one time)	$2,999	$0
Hosting fee (per month per store)	$199	$20
Transaction fee*	3.95%	0.00%
Per order fees**	Limited to 50 orders per month per store	Unlimited
API fees***	Up to 30,000 hits per month per store	Unlimited
Advanced SAML SSO	$3,500 setup fee per store, then $99 per month per store	Included for free
Additional fees****	6 more features and integrations available	All included for free
Credit card processing fees	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30

Fee
License fee (one time)	$2,999	$0
Hosting fee (per month per store)	$199	$20
Transaction fee*	3.95%	0.00%
Per order fees**	Limited to 50 orders per month per store	Unlimited
API fees***	Up to 30,000 hits per month per store	Unlimited
Advanced SAML SSO	$3,500 setup fee per store, then $99 per month per store	Included for free
Additional fees****	6 more features and integrations available	All included for free
Credit card processing fees	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30

* Only applies to Pop-Up Stores.
** Ranges from $0.69 to $0.99 per Order above 50 for Company Stores. Redemption Stores are $0.99 per Order from the 1st Order.
*** API hits above 30,000 cost $0.03 per hit for Company Stores.
**** Setup fee per Company Store for Punchout is $2,500, then $195/store/month. Other features and integrations are $19 to $79 per month.

Prodigy hosts all Stores on its dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure for $20 per month per Store, which is effectively a pass-through of our costs, compared to BrightStores at $199 per month for a savings of 90%.

In an industry where only 5 – 10% drops to the bottom line, OMG’s 3.95% transaction fee takes 40 – 80% of the profit from any Pop-Up Stores distributors may launch for their clients. BrightStores’ hosting fee for one Company Store is $2,388 per year, so that’s nearly 1% for a store with $250,000 of annual sales, although, assuming the average order is less than $400, the per order fee probably kicked in well below that level. The bottom line is that all Company and Pop-Up Store solutions have been taking advantage of distributors for far too long.

So, what’s the catch, how does Prodigy Commerce make money? It’s really simple, we partner with the payment processors integrated into our platform and they share a portion of their revenue with us. The payment processing rate is the standard 2.9% + $0.30 (no markup). We only earn revenue when a shopper checks out. Prodigy’s business model is perfectly aligned with the distributor’s goal of increasing sales.

Efficiency Gains

The promotional products industry is operationally complex with 1,000s of suppliers of blank products and decorators who apply brands’ logos using a variety of techniques. Orders need to be instantaneously routed to these vendors for work and fulfillment to ensure the shopper (usually an employee of the client/brand) receives their merchandise on time.

We added six key integrations to our platform to automate the workflow.

With NetSuite as the source of truth, our integration automatically syncs Products and Inventory, sends Sales Orders to NetSuite, and receives Fulfillments from NetSuite. This integration is provided free of charge and can be used for an unlimited number of Company, Pop-Up, Redemption, and POD Stores.

We can quickly and easily migrate all of the existing Stores a distributor has on any industry-specific or generic eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, etc. for $40 per hour, which is effectively a pass-through of our costs. Migrations include all product data, images/artwork, categories, customers, customer balances, and customer groups, and we will even match (or improve upon) the existing storefront designs so they’re ready for launch.

Platforms like BrightStores are only integrated into version 1 of Syncore’s API. As such, supplier and decoration information is not populated into Sales Orders, leading to a significant amount of manual work, and version 1 does not allow for the generation of Electronic Purchase Orders (ePOs) to the suppliers of blank products and decorators. This is obviously unacceptable; therefore, our integration with version 2 of Syncore’s API allows for the transmission of supplier and decoration information from Prodigy Stores into Syncore and the generation of ePOs.

Our Syncore integration also includes an Aggregate Orders feature. When enabled, this allows distributors to batch an unlimited number of orders together and create one large Sales Order in Syncore. This can be done automatically, by setting a start date and an interval (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly), or manually.

The typical use case for automatic batching is for a Company Store where production is done periodically. Stores that are manually batched tend to be Pop-Ups and Redemption Stores that only run for a short period of time and the end date may not be known at the outset. When an automatic batch is created, it is, unsurprisingly, automatically pushed to Syncore, however, a manual batch requires the distributor to select the orders they want to batch from their orders’ list and send the created batch to Syncore. In either case, batches are condensed as efficiently as possible without losing the critical supplier, decoration method, and other details, like sizes and colors, that are needed to generate large, accurate ePOs.

While Syncore does not send data back to Prodigy, many of our clients use ShipStation to automate fulfillments. Since we provide links in Syncore to each Prodigy order, distributors that don’t use ShipStation can effortlessly mark orders as fulfilled in Prodigy if they want shoppers to receive confirmation emails with links to the tracking information.

At present, our Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central integration only sends Sales Orders to Business Central. We are seeking opportunities to augment our Business Central integration to include automatically syncing Products and Inventory and receiving Fulfillments from Business Central. As with NetSuite, this integration is provided free of charge and can be used for an unlimited number of Company, Pop-Up, Redemption, and POD Stores.

Our ShipStation integration allows an unlimited number of Stores to automatically feed into one instance of ShipStation.

Each Prodigy Store includes identifying information so orders can easily be traced to and from ShipStation. When an order is fulfilled, ShipStation automatically marks it as such in Prodigy. The distributor can either use ShipStation or Prodigy to send shoppers confirmation emails with links to the tracking information. Our ShipStation integration supports split shipment, which are common in this industry.

Just like with ShipStation, our Order Desk integration allows an unlimited number of Stores to automatically feed into one instance of Order Desk.

Each Prodigy Store includes identifying information so orders can easily be traced to and from Order Desk. When an order is fulfilled, Order Desk automatically marks it as such in Prodigy, and the shopper will receive a confirmation email from Prodigy with a link to the tracking information.

With a plethora of choices in the Print On Demand (POD) world, our clients overwhelmingly asked us to integrate with Printify in March 2026. They were attracted to Printify because of their longstanding commitment to quality, deep product catalog, technological prowess, cost competitiveness, enterprise capabilities, and willingness to provide a white label offering. Printify went from strength-to-strength when they merged with Printful in late 2024, adding substantially to their global production capabilities.

Unlike OMG’s collaboration with STAHLS’ Fulfill Engine, distributors only need to build the POD products they want to offer for their clients once, on Printify’s platform. Our integration pulls them into their Prodigy Store, which can also include products that will be decorated in-house and/or by other third-parties. Checkouts that contain a mix of items route the line items accordingly; POD items to Printify and other items via the distributors normal workflow. In any event, the entire checkout is pushed to any integrated CRM/ERP the distributor uses as their source of truth for billing and recordkeeping purposes.

Distributors who are interested in our Printify integration should contact us. We would be happy to personally introduce you to Printify’s U.S.-based business development team. They come from the promotional products industry, having worked for BAMKO, HALO Branded Solutions, Staples Promotional Products, and Taylor Corporation.

When our External Integrations App is enabled, our platform can interact with a wide range of third-party applications, including Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). It includes an outbound orders’ webhook and inbound fulfillment and inventory webhooks. Distributors’ tech teams and/or their third-party software development vendors use these webhooks in cases where we can not justify undertaking a direct integration, such as into an obscure WMS.

As with the six integrations outlined above, we are willing to integrate, free of charge, into well-known third-party systems and/or homegrown workflow management systems that have been built over the decades by some of the largest distributors in the promotional products industry.

Tech for Scaling

Distributors want and need their commissioned sales force to succeed. To do so requires modern tools and technology to win new business and expand those relationships. The marketing and HR departments of the brands they’re selling into understand the significant ROI that swag delivers, however, they want to see Virtual Samples, or better yet, a Demo Stores with their logos on a wide range of soft and hard goods before signing on the dotted line.

Prodigy’s PromoStandards integration provides access to a range of top suppliers and offers some key benefits.

Products can be built in a Prodigy Store by selecting a supplier from the dropdown and entering the Product ID. From there, colors and sizes, if applicable, can be deselected so that only the relevant variants are included. Then, you can choose to include only the supplier provided images you want to use in conjunction with our Logo Management feature. Alternatively, all supplier provided images can be excluded if you want to create the artwork offline and upload the branded images.

Live inventory from a supplier can be enabled on a product-by-product basis at the variant level so the available quantities are accurately presented on the storefront. Alternatively, inventory levels may be periodically synced from an integrated ERP, or inventory levels can be managed manually by using our simple in-stock/out-of-stock toggles.

Prodigy’s proprietary Logo Management feature allows you to upload multiple client logos to a store. At the product level, you can create one or more logo locations (e.g., left chest, right sleeve, etc.) and then use our logo placement tool to specify the exact placement and orientation of the client’s logo at each location for each variant image. You can also control the availability of each logo for each variant (e.g., exclude a white logo from a white variant). On the storefront, the customer can choose from the available logo(s) for the location(s) you defined.

Prodigy’s proprietary Shop by Brand feature allows you to upload multiple client logos for multiple brands to a Store. The primary use cases are healthcare networks and franchise operations that have dozens (or even hundreds) of brands under one parent company.

This feature allows you to group multiple client logos by brand on our platform and use our brand navigation capabilities on the storefront so that shoppers from a particular brand will only see the products that are relevant to them. Another way to solve for these uses cases is to use our Customer Groups and Permissions feature. If the prospective shoppers from each brand are known in advance, they can be uploaded to the store, assigned into customer groups, and restricted from seeing all the other brands.

Regardless of the approach taken, the efficiency gains can be quite significant since you only need to build each product once and leverage our Shop by Brand feature. Obviously, the ongoing maintenance of a smaller product catalog requires a lot less time and effort.

Prodigy’s proprietary Product Templates feature allows you to turn products from one Store into templates that are reusable across multiple Stores that you manage for clients. The suggested use of this feature is that you create a Catalog Store on our platform (free of charge) that contains all the products you typically use in Stores and define them all as templates. Then, when you’re building a new Store for a client, you can quickly populate it with products from the Catalog Store templates.

The templates include all product information, including logo locations and links to PromoStandards’ suppliers, which is retained when pushed to a new Store. This feature also allows you to push mass updates to descriptions, pricing, etc. from a template in the Catalog Store to any number of other Stores that are using that template.

The above features allow a distributor’s sales force to quickly build custom branded Demo Stores. Logos can be added to products and edited with one click. The Demo Store can then be turned into a fully functional Store.

With great technology and pricing that lowers Company Store platform costs by up to 90%, distributors can earn a lot more profit and commissioned salespeople can opportunistically pursue smaller brands. Existing client relationships can also be creatively expanded. For example, Pop-Up Stores can be launched quickly, the cost won’t exceed $20 per month for hosting, and there’s no transaction fee. When the Pop-Up Store has served its purpose, simply disconnect the hosting and leave it on the Prodigy platform (free of charge) for a possible relaunch.

Prodigy Commerce Has All the Other Features Distributors Need

As a well-established, Shopify-like, B2C eCommerce platform, all we had to do was add several B2B and unique features to Prodigy to serve the promotional products industry. When distributors need us to add additional features, or tweak existing ones, we often do so very quickly and free of charge.

• Storefront Design: Fully branded from first click to checkout using WordPress and Elementor as the drag-and-drop, visual page builder. Intricately customized, Shopify-like experiences can be achieved in a small fraction of the time. For distributors who require assistance, or would like us to build some or all of their clients’ storefronts, we offer this as a service for $40 per hour, which is effectively a pass-through of our costs.
• Responsive Stores: Designs are fully responsive across all device types. This embraces all shoppers, whether they’re using smartphones, desktops, or tablets.
• Security: An SSL/TLS certificate is included with each Store, the checkout is PCI-compliant, and we use Google’s invisible reCAPTCHA to prevent card-testing fraud attacks. Our Data Security Statement can be found here.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Prodigy hosts all Stores on its dedicated AWS infrastructure, which is known for its speed and performance and provides the gold standard for uptime reliability at 99.999%.
• Password Protection: Access to Company, Pop-Up, Redemption, and POD Store websites can be restricted to users who have created an account and members of the general public can be blocked.
• Customer Account Registration: The creation of customer accounts can be disabled or require approval, similar to our Manager Order Approval flow. Registration can also be restricted to specific email domains (with or without approval). This allows distributors to tightly control who gains access to a store.
• Single Sign-On: SSO allows a brand’s employees to seamlessly log in to their Prodigy Stores using their corporate network login credentials. We currently support SAML, Okta, and Auth0 and can add other Corporate Identity Providers upon request. We can help distributors and their clients set up SSO free of charge, which is relatively easy, and we also don’t charge for using it.
• Manager Order Approval (MOA): Create permission flows for specified customer groups at any dollar threshold. MOA can also be targeted to specific products and/or payment methods (e.g., you may only want to approve PO/GL Code checkouts and let credit card checkouts sail through).
• Tiered Pricing (aka Quantity and Price Breaks): Distributors can set up different pricing tiers for products based on the quantity purchased. This encourages bulk purchases and helps increase AOV. This feature can also be used to set minimum order quantities, even when there are no tiers.
• Customer Group Restrictions – Payment Methods: Restrict PO Code or credit card checkouts for certain customer groups.
• Customer Group Restrictions – Categories: Restrict certain categories so they are only accessible by authorized customer groups (e.g., the marketing department or HR).
• Customer Group Restrictions – Shipping Methods: Restrict certain shipping methods (e.g., overnight or next day) for certain customer groups.
• Customer Group Restrictions – Office Shipping: Create a pre-defined list of office shipping addresses that can be selected from at checkout. Optionally, any address can be added at checkout, like an employee’s home address. Payment for the various shipping options can be differentiated (e.g., shipments to an office can be free or a flat rate and shipments to home can be calculated UPS).
• Customer Group Restrictions – Logos: Restrict certain logos for certain customer groups.
• Customer Group Restrictions – Brands: When using our Shop by Brand feature for Stores with more than one brand (e.g., healthcare networks, franchise operations, etc.), you can restrict all the brands that are not applicable to each customer group so that only the relevant logos will appear across the product catalog and during checkout.
• Customer Group Restrictions – Tags: This allows you to tag products so they can be restricted for certain customer groups. This is used when you want a customer group to be restricted from only certain products in a category while maintaining their access to all the other products in that category.
• Bulk Add to Cart: Shoppers can add unlimited quantities of multiple variants to their cart with one click, instead of adding each item for each variant individually. This saves time for the shopper and helps increase AOV.
• Personalization: This feature can be enabled on a store-by-store basis to allow the shopper to communicate their personalization details for decoration on product, such as their name.
• Custom Data Collection: This feature can be enabled as the first step of checkout to allow the distributor to collect as much data as they wish.
• Inventory Management: Distributors can use Prodigy to track inventory they own or is owned by their clients by SKU/variant, tap into our PromoStandards’ integration for live inventory checks from a range of top suppliers, or simply present items on their stores as in-stock or out-of-stock. Where possible, Prodigy can receive periodic inventory updates from integrated ERPs or WMSs.
• Coupons and Discounts: Discounts can be set on any product. The primary use case for distributors is to relieve old inventory that they own. Coupon codes can be generated with fixed percentage or fixed dollar amounts and targeted at different checkout line items, such as the subtotal, shipping, or cart total, specific categories, or individual products. Since distributors typically use coupons as a payment method, they can be enabled as such so that sales tax is calculated on the gross amount and their sales tax filings in the states where they have nexus are accurate.
• Product Categories: Create as many categories and subcategories as you wish and organize them however you like; by product type such as “Apparel” or “Electronics”, by brand such as “Nike” or “Adidas”, or by usage such as “Gifts” or “Employee Appreciation”, the control is in your hands.
• Product Management: Prodigy has all the tools and settings to effortlessly build and present catalogs, including the ability to add up-sells and cross-sells. You can also add a setup fee at the product level.
• Product Import/Export: Easily import a product catalog of any size using our simple CSV import tool. Since a distributor’s data is their property, we also provide a product and customer account data export tool.
• Order Management: For distributors who want to use Prodigy to manage their orders, they can quickly assess the risk of fraud, capture payments, fulfill orders (i.e., print shipping labels), handle returns and process refunds, and manage customer accounts all from one dashboard.
• Migration Tools: We can quickly and easily migrate all products, categories, customers, and settings from any other Company Store building solution to Prodigy. We’ll even spend a couple/few hours applying your clients’ brand guidelines and matching the design so it’s ready for launch.
• Clone Store Settings: We can quickly generate new Company Stores for distributors with all their pre-determined sales tax and shipping settings.
• Unlimited Support: We provide free guided onboarding and free multi-channel ongoing support for distributors (phone, email, and online chat).
• Abandoned Cart Recovery: You can configure automatic emails to follow up with customers that abandon the checkout process. This can be used to increase sales from Pop-Up Stores that will be closing on a certain date. The email contains a link back to the last checkout step they were on and can be fully customized with your own message.
• Accept and Process Payments: Prodigy ensures that each distributor forms a direct relationship with an actual payment processor instead of going through payment facilitators like Stripe, PayPal, or Square. The elimination of these intermediaries means transactions won’t be blocked and distributors benefit from next-day funding and efficient chargeback management. Our payment processing rates are the standard 2.9% + $0.30. All major credit cards are accepted; Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. One-click checkout is available for shoppers who create an account or use Apple Pay or Google Pay.
• Account Balances: Create unique redemption codes that represent any dollar amount and share them with your employees and business partners via email for purchases from your Company Store. Since this method of payment circumvents our integrated payment processors, we charge distributors a 1% transaction fee.
• ShipEngine: Get real-time shipping rates from all the major carriers; UPS, FedEx, DHL, and USPS. Choose the carriers and domestic and international service levels you want to offer and enter the applicable HS codes if you ship internationally so that tariffs can be accurately calculated and collected at checkout. Modify the shipping rates up or down by percentage or dollar amounts and offer free shipping options if you wish.
• TaxJar: Provides automated, worldwide, sales tax calculations. Create an unlimited number of nexus locations. Activate this feature with one click from the store settings.
• MaxMind minFraud: Assess the risk of fraud. Every order receives a risk score that is clearly visible on the dashboard. Choose whether to accept or decline an order based on the results.

Learn More

Give us a call during normal business hours in California at (800) 930-2902 or send us an email at support@prodigycommerce.com to learn if Prodigy Commerce is the best Company Store solution for you. Getting started is quick and easy.