Why will promotional products brokers disappear?

The reason why people say promotional products brokers will disappear is simple:  The Internet.

It's all Al Gore's fault so don't shoot the messenger...  

Al Gore invented the Internet to ruin promotional products brokers.

It really shouldn't be this way, but so many promotional products brokers have fallen into the trap of doing nothing more than just finding you stuff.  And, once they sense that you may have multiple brokers also finding you the same stuff, they just give it away.  Giving it away is totally sensible really.  After all, they aren't adding any value to the products they sell so why should they expect to make any money off of selling it to you untouched.

I know, I know, there are a ton of brokers that are adding a ton of value.  But, I wouldn't call these people brokers.  These people are marketing professionals that just happen to work for themselves instead of your company.  These people I love.  The promo brokers that will disappear are the ones that are just "brokers".

If you don't believe what I'm saying, just think logically about what a promo broker does.  They use the Internet to find you stuff and they work like heck to get the price of that stuff down.  It's actually cheaper for the people selling that stuff to just let you, the end customer, buy the stuff directly from them.  It's cheaper because they don't have to put up with the brokers constantly pecking away at their pricing, all while submitting handwritten orders because they're not real companies.

I know none of this sounds very nice.  It's a little on the nose, I admit.  There was definitely a time when brokers were a great way to scale up a sales force without having to hire a bunch of sales people, but if that time hasn't already passed us by, it's about to.  

Let's get real here and just admit that Al Gore killed the promo broker when he invented the Internet.