The change moves the company away from a product-first approach, towards merchandise designed to influence consumer behaviour — encouraging repeat purchase, product trial and participation — rather than merchandise distributed as a giveaway.
Under the repositioning, the company defines creative merchandise as branded product designed to serve a specific marketing objective — repeat purchase, product trial, advocacy or participation — with the objective decided before the product is chosen. It contrasts this with merchandise selected from a catalogue and added to a campaign after the fact.
DTC World said the change responds to how merchandise is now bought. Merchandise budgets increasingly sit inside campaign lines rather than procurement and are judged on what they achieve rather than what they cost, which requires a different starting point: not a product range, but the behaviour a brand needs from its shoppers.
"Most merchandise is designed to be handed out. Very little of it is designed to be kept," said Jason Cheng, Managing Director of DTC World. "That is the standard we work to. If a consumer would not choose to keep the merchandise after the campaign ends, it was never going to do anything for the brand — and that is a design problem, not a sourcing one."
One example of the approach is the company's work with Ben & Jerry's Singapore, for which DTC World designed four limited-edition socks inspired by the brand's ice cream flavours. Each pair was packaged in a miniature pint container and distributed across participating retailers, produced as a collectible set rather than a single giveaway item, with the packaging itself designed to be kept. The socks were fully redeemed, and the company said the designs were widely shared on social media.
Similar formats now run through much of the company's campaign work: collectible series, blind box drops, limited-edition releases and licensed IP collaborations that give consumers a reason to return rather than a reason to accept a free item.
DTC World said campaign merchandise now sits at the centre of its business: programmes built around a defined marketing objective and judged on the consumer behaviour they move. The company continues to produce corporate gifts alongside this work, where the job is building relationships with a known audience rather than moving behaviour at scale.
"Consumers are getting more selective about what they keep, and that is raising the bar on design," Cheng said. "We expect demand to keep moving towards original artwork, proprietary characters and culturally specific work — merchandise that could only have come from one brand."
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About DTC World
Founded in 2001, DTC World Corporation is a creative merchandise company headquartered in Singapore, with operations in Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and China. The company designs and produces campaign merchandise, gift-with-purchase premiums, licensed character merchandise and corporate gifts for consumer brands across Asia-Pacific, working from a brand's marketing objective rather than a product catalogue.
More information is available at dtcworld.com.
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