Promotional USB Flash Drives – Best Sellers in 2010

With the end of 2010 fast approaching its time for our annual roundup of the best selling promotional USB flash drives in 2010 and a quick look at the trends we expect to see emerging in 2011.

Overall promotional USB flash drives continue to grow in popularity with more companies realising that by pre-loading them with sales material, press releases and media files that they can more than offset the cost of the purchase of the flash drive from the savings they make by not printing this collateral. Falling costs, faster lead times, a wider range of models and continued innovation by the manufacturers have also driven their popularity.

Custom flash drives (fully bespoke models) rather than standard factory designs have also seen a big leap in popularity in 2010, again, partly driven by falling costs, reduced set-up and tooling costs and improved lead times. The incredibly popularity of flash drives means it can be increasingly difficult to generate a “wow” factor with standard drives and this has also led to the move towards custom USB memory sticks.

From the standard range of USB drives the best sellers in 2010 were:

Twister USB Memory Sticks – The simple “Twister” flash drive regularly tops the list of best sellers and 2010 is no

exception. Its popularity derives from its simplicity, the fact there is no cap to lose and because it comes in a wide range of colours. New mono versions (where the rotating clip matches the body colour) have proven to be an instant hit further fuelling demand for the Twister.

USB Credit Cards – the new 2mm thick versions of the USB credit card have become an instant hit. A little more expensive than standard shaped USB flash drives but with significantly more print area to work with they are ideal for more complex images. The fact that they are the same size as a standard bankcard means they are ideal to pop into a wallet or purse.

 

Chic USB Flash Drive – clean, simple lines coupled with a wide range of colours and a good print area make this a popular USB stick. Certainly not one of the newer styles but an endearing favourite all the same.

Looking forward to 2011 we expect to see further growth in the demand for customised USB flash drives and the first generation of USB 3.0 promotional flash drives. At the moment USB 3.0 products are too expensive to be considered by the promotional market but in 2011 we’re likely to see the first promotional versions issued albeit it’s likely these will be tightly targeted because they are going to be expensive.

With falling prices the typical memory size used for promotional usb flash drives is likely to increase from 1GB to 2GB or 4GB and with this extra space is likely to come a growth in the demand for pre-loading the drives with data before they are distributed.