PPB January 2016

INNOVATE

38 •

PPB

• JANUARY 2016

PPAI’s Promotional Products Pioneers

organization was committed

to offering the most complete

information, sourcing tools

and tech solutions available.

Today, ASI offers the ESP

platform with nearly 950,000

products and multiplatform

web services, plus video,

online social marketing and

virtual trade shows, and a

number of other products and

services for subscribers includ-

ing online research, marketing

opportunities, trade shows,

education, certification, publi-

cations, custom websites and

catalogs, and more.

“If I’m to be remembered

for anything, I’d like it to be

for helping the over 20,000

distributor members grow

their businesses and improve

their profitability,” says Cohn.

“I love the idea that they will

be able to pass on their busi-

ness to future generations

like our family has done.”

Forest P. Gill

The late Forest P. Gill, for-

mer chairman of Gill Studios,

Inc., is credited with develop-

ing the first bumper sticker in

the 1940s. He pioneered the

use of a revolutionary adhe-

sive that allowed the stickers

to adhere securely and tem-

porarily to vehicles, and

paved the way for the mod-

ern bumper sticker.

Looking for a way to grow

the business following WWII,

Gill followed a printer friend’s

suggestion to advertise in a

magazine directed toward

independent salespeople,

and, as luck would have it, a

distributor company in

Arlington, Texas, discovered

Gill’s bumper sticker and

began to sell it. Gill Studios,

a silk-screen printing compa-

ny he founded in 1934,

began to grow steadily as

more and more distributors

sold the new product.

By the time of his passing

in 2005, the Gill catalog, first

introduced as an eight-page

book in the 1950s, had grown

to 128 pages, the number of

employees at Gill Studios had

grown from 16 in 1945 to more

than 300 and bumper stickers

had soared to popularity.

Those who worked with

Gill say he was always grate-

ful to the promotional prod-

ucts industry and the many

distributors who took his

products to the advertising

market. And he was pleased

that the simple bumper sticker

had led to so many jobs for

the men and women who

made Gill Studios one of the

industry’s leading suppliers.

Frank P. Krasovec

Frank Krasovec, founder

and former CEO of the previ-

ous Texas-based supplier

Norwood Promotional

Products, Inc. (NPPI), has built

a number of successful com-

panies over the past 30 years.

In the promotional products

industry, he is credited with

being the first to bring pri-

vate equity money into the

industry and he was a leader

in aggregation.

“Breaking the barriers to

get big was most satisfying in

what was and still is an indus-

try made up of many small

suppliers,” Krasovec says.

“We were a small order-pro-

cessing company and eventu-

ally processed over 1.2 mil-

lion seasonal and time-sensi-

tive small ($400) orders annu-

ally. This required a major

investment in systems and

training.”

Since its founding in

1983, NPPI grew from $4 mil-

lion to more than $470 mil-

lion in annual revenues over

the next two decades and

became recognized as the

leading supplier of promo-

tional products. At its peak,

the company represented

more than 3,000 products

sold by more than 16,000 dis-

tributors nationwide.

Bringing viability as a sup-

plier to Wall Street was fun

but frustrating, he remem-

bers. “With Wall Street, it was

difficult explaining small-

order processing to people

who weren’t interested in

basic fundamentals at the

time. They wanted big orders

and continued to ask why we

did not sell in Wal-Mart or

direct. Most thought distribu-

tor websites represented

direct sales and asked us why

we did not do the same.

Over 8,000 distributors used

our website to back up theirs.

Eventually Wall Street got it.”

Norm Stern

By the 1950s, the promo-

tional products industry had

been around for about half a

century but the potential for

marketing through promotional

products was largely untapped.

Enter Norm Stern, CEO of dis-

tributor Norscot Group Inc.

and one of the industry’s origi-

nal pioneers, who introduced a

number of ground-breaking

ideas that have since become

industry standards such as cus-

tom co-op catalogs and propri-

etary products such as corpo-

rate jewelry, custom-designed

calendars and scale model

replicas. He was also the first

to develop one-stop shopping

for turnkey outsourced promo-

tional products and he revolu-

tionized the industry by creat-

ing direct-mail promotional

products catalogs targeted at

business-to-business cus-

tomers.

“Early on, I discovered

that I could reach more peo-

ple and increase my sales vol-

“Breaking the barriers to get big was most satisfying

in what was and still is an industry made up of many

small suppliers.”

—Frank P. Krasovec