For 25 years, Goldstar has been painting the industry with vibrant colours and unforgettable designs. This year, we’re not just celebrating a milestone—we’re honouring a legacy of excellence in full-colour 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-Colour Legacy
Our full-colour adventure began in 1999 with an idea that was going to revolutionise 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, colourful designs with nearly limitless colours 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 Astaire Pen (#CLR) and Chaplin Pen (#CTR) continue to be moulded at our facility in Shelbyville, TN.
CLR
CTR
Over the next decade, this breakthrough transformed our multi-colour 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 in North America.
2015: Our New Brand, Inspired by Colour 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 colour) 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-colour design to embrace our commitment to full-colour. We lightened our primary font colours and refreshed our iconic swirl with a full spectrum of colours 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 colour you need, with as little time and effort as possible” gave way to the new name—SimpliColour®. No matter how large, colourful, or complex a company’s branding is, we eliminate setup costs, shipping charges, and extra imprint fees, making multi-colour 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 SimpliColour® messaging gained momentum and quickly took off. Next on our list was the challenge of introducing new trim colours, 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 Lebeau Writing Collection, which debuted in our 2016 catalogue with (4) styles and (10) colour options. Additionally, our popular Hepburn Chrome #PHG expanded with (13) new trim colours and USA-made parts.
2018-2022: Advancing Full-Colour Across our Portfolio
By 2018, we set our sights beyond our SimpliColour® decorated products to include unexplored categories of more traditional metal and plastic pens. With speed and flexibility, we introduced ColourJet™ 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 catalogue 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 ColourJet™ on 90% of our writing instruments, leading the promotional writing instrument category with our full-colour 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-colour masks and other essential PPE products. By 2022, we were back at it, further expanding our full-colour product SKUs in writing, stationery, drinkware, and bags.
2024 & Beyond: More Product, More Colour. More Simplicity®
Here we are in 2024 two and a half decades later, and earlier this year we introduced full-colour 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.
Find even more inspiration in full-colour design by clicking the link here.