For 25 years, Goldstar has been painting the industry with vibrant colors and unforgettable designs. This year, we’re not just celebrating a milestone—we’re honoring a legacy of excellence in full-color decoration that remains a cornerstone of our company, delighting customers to this day with high-quality decoration and unbeatable affordability. Our commitment to continuous innovation has allowed us to stay ahead of industry trends and meet the evolving needs of our clients. As we mark this anniversary, we invite you to hear a little more about our journey, our progress, and the principles that have driven our success over the past quarter-century.
1999: The Start of Our Full-Color Legacy
Our full-color adventure began in 1999 with an idea that was going to revolutionize the promotional writing instrument industry. We developed a completely new process, unique to us, that would set us apart from the competition. Designed, engineered, and built by our in-house team, this bold innovation was a significant investment for a company of our size at the time. Our executive team knew it was a gamble for the business’s future, so they appropriately named the two machines “Blackjack” and “Poker. To this day we refer to this process internally as “Casino.”
This efficient, high-speed printing process creates intricate, colorful designs with nearly limitless colors and a 360-degree imprint area, providing the largest imprint possible and quickly meeting high-volume demands. Some of the first pens decorated using this machine are still available today. Best-sellers like Colorama (#CLR) and Grip-Write (#CTR) continue to be molded at our facility in Shelbyville, TN.
CLR
CTR
Over the next decade, this breakthrough transformed our multi-color printing capabilities beyond writing instruments, expanding into categories such as mugs, tools, and stationery across North America and Europe. Items like our 3” x 5” Spiral-Bound Notebook (#NTH) and 11 oz C-handle mug (#MUG), introduced in the mid-2000s, remain some of our best-sellers at
2015: Our New brand, Inspired by Color and Simplicity®
By 2015, Goldstar was buzzing with new energy. We brought on fresh leadership, reimagined the marketing department, and our European business was celebrating its third successful year. With the rise of the “Amazon” model offering free delivery, we knew it was time to rethink how distributors bought promotional products. Our goal was to simplify the process by eliminating the hassle of calculating all those frustrating fees—shipping, set-ups, decoration, run charges, proof charges, and more—and offering one simple, all-inclusive price.
From that new vision, our tagline “Experience Simplicity®” was born. We committed to eliminating all additional decoration and set-up fees (including full color) and ground shipping on writing instruments, giving our distributors and their customers a simple and transparent way to buy products.
As part of this rebrand, our logo evolved from a simple two-color design to embrace our commitment to full-color. We lightened our primary font colors and refreshed our iconic swirl with a full spectrum of colors inspired by an artist’s brush stroke.
As the idea of Simplicity® began to fill the foundation of Goldstar®, we knew that when it came to branding, our “Casino” printing process was too unique not to give it its own name. Our vision of “We make it simple to get the color you need, with as little time and effort as possible” gave way to the new name—SimpliColor®. No matter how large, colorful, or complex a company’s branding is, we eliminate setup costs, shipping charges, and extra imprint fees, making multi-color logo printing straightforward and helping brand messages shine.
2016: SimpliColor® Wraps Itself Around a New Writing Collection
Following a big year of improvement, our all-inclusive pricing and new SimpliColor® messaging gained momentum and quickly took off. Next on our list was the challenge of introducing new trim colors, designs, and stylus options. Simple black and white trims weren’t enough, so we went back to the drawing board. This led to the creation of our Elite Writing Collection, which debuted in our 2016 catalog with (4) styles and (10) color options. Additionally, our popular Vision Grip #PHG expanded with (13) new trim colors and USA-made parts.
2018-2022: Advancing Full-Color Across our Portfolio
By 2018, we set our sights beyond our SimpliColor® decorated products to include unexplored categories of more traditional metal and plastic pens. With speed and flexibility, we introduced ColorJet™ on a select handful of metal pens and expanded this new decoration method across nearly every product in our lineup throughout the year.
In 2019, our catalog featured over 3 dozen new styles, including plastic pens and our first drinkware collection, soon to be available with a full 360˚ wrap. Today, we offer ColorJet™ on 90% of our writing instruments, leading the promotional writing instrument category with our full-color capabilities.
The progress continued into 2020, adding almost 2 dozen styles of drinkware, 10 stationery SKUs, and, for the first time, 11 styles of bags, drawstrings, and lunch totes. While the pandemic temporarily paused some of our product development, we adapted by producing full-color masks and other essential PPE products. By 2022, we were back at it, further expanding our full-color product SKUs in writing, stationery, drinkware, and bags.
2024 & Beyond: More Product, More Color. More Simplicity®
Here we are in 2024 two and a half decades later, and earlier this year we introduced full-color Heat Transfer on non-woven and cotton bags and higher-end products like coolers and backpacks. In true Goldstar fashion, we have no intention of slowing down. We remain committed to providing distributors with simple, efficient ways for businesses to get the vibrant shades they need with as little time and effort as possible.