SINCE 1973
Getting merchandise right since 1973.
Addiss Enterprises sources, designs, and produces merchandise for organizations that care about getting it right. Museums and galleries, performing arts, nonprofits, professional services firms: if the object matters, so does who you trust to get it right.
WHO WE SERVE
Who we work with
We work with all kinds of organizations. We’ve developed particular depth in arts and cultural institutions: museums and galleries, performing arts, botanical gardens, history and science. Partly that’s legacy: the people who built this practice came out of Broadway and decades of close involvement with cultural institutions. Mostly it’s because we understand these institutions, and most vendors don’t.
Inside every cultural institution there are usually two distinct merchandise conversations. The store manager is thinking about assortment, margin, and what will actually sell beside the collection. The development director is thinking about the major donor gift, the opening night package, the board member acknowledgment. Different problems, different answers, and we work across both.
We also work with nonprofits, professional services firms, associations, and founder-led companies that care about what goes out under their name. The work looks different across these contexts. The standard doesn’t.
Cultural institutions in particular are underserved by the promotional products industry. Their audiences expect quality, their merchandise can carry real margin, and most of what they’re offered is the same interchangeable trade-show product. We know how to solve that.
THE PROBLEM
Why the wrong merchandise happens
Most branded merchandise underwhelms in predictable ways. It’s generic, off-brand, priced wrong, or simply not something this particular audience would ever buy. Usually that’s because whoever supplied it was filling an order, not thinking about the institution.
We work the other way around. We start from your field and your audience, we track what’s actually working and what’s new, and we bring you the few things genuinely worth offering, at a price and margin that make sense for you.
We know your field.
We track what peer institutions in your sector are buying, what’s converting, and what already feels dated. That means knowing what the best museum stores in your category are doing right now, and where the gaps are between what your audience wants and what they’re being offered.
We select, we don’t just supply.
Anyone can pull product from a list. We bring you the few options worth offering: the right quality, the right price point, and the margin that makes them worth carrying, chosen for your mission and your audience, not ours.
We handle it through delivery.
From the first conversation to proof to production to delivery, the details are managed. You approve what matters and the rest is handled quietly. Most clients tell us the experience is calmer than they expected, which is exactly the result we’re after.
Work that earns a place on the shelf.
On the shelf, in the program, or in the artist’s hands.
Product built to sell beside the collection, not in a giveaway pile.
Catalogs, journals, prints, cards, and stationery.
Exhibition tie-ins and collectible runs made from scratch.
Retail-grade apparel, tote bags, scarves, and merch.
Opening-night, company, and major-donor gifts that land.
Crystal, custom-fabricated, and milestone pieces.
We work across thousands of products and hundreds of manufacturers and suppliers, and bring you only the few worth offering.
The orders we manage are the ones clients don’t have to worry about. Everything else is mechanics.
Tell us what you’re working on.
A rough idea is enough to start. Most of our long-running client relationships began with a single project.