PPB April 2021

portion of our team was used to working remotely, either all of the time or at least portions of the time,” says Roller, who’s been in the industry for 22 years and with HALO for five. She and her team use online tools like teleconferencing, webinars, internal team email and Instant Messenger daily. The company’s new employee orientation and training programs have always been online along with an extensive library for internal systems and policies. Sheer growth was a strategy Los Angeles, California-based distributor BAMKO used to get ahead of any downturn brought on by the pandemic. The company recently reported that it grew top line sales in 2020 by 88 percent. A large percentage of that growth was in PPE, but sales also grew in traditional promotional products through efforts focused on industries identified as less impacted by the lockdowns such as the gig economy and food delivery services. As a result, BAMKO’s workforce of about 300 is significantly larger than a year ago. “We’ve brought on a number of large accounts in the past year, so we’ve had to bring on project managers and account managers to help us with that program business,” says Joshua White, SVP of strategic partnerships and general counsel. “We were responsive and proactive about not waiting for things to come back. We saw that the business climate was changing around us, and we looked for where the opportunities were and gave our sales team the tools to win those accounts. We went out and asked people for their business—and a lot of times they gave it to us.” To help position the company to be able to power through what looked like a very difficult year ahead, BAMKO’s management team voluntarily took a 10- to 20-percent pay cut early in 2020 that lasted through year-end. This allowed them time to see how business was going to play out before making any staff reductions. By the time they had to make a decision about the rest of the team, the company had done enough business in PPE to ensure that downsizing would not be necessary. “For a $200 million company, we are wildly entrepreneurial,” says White. “We were really consistent about experimenting in an entrepreneurial way. We had humility to admit when what we tried didn’t work and we stopped doing it. And when something worked, we did more of it. We were quick and agile and ran experiments in different segments with different marketing and different products.” White also says the company is unique from technology, warehousing and sourcing perspectives, with 35 employees in Southeast Asia who provide independent sourcing. BAMKO also has its own software, order processing and order management platform called CORE, an internal, proprietary system that manages every aspect of the business from an order quote through completion of the business and delivery. It allows all employees access to information and to collaborate with anyone in the company across the globe on any project. As a result, when the lockdown required employees to “When we had to close our offices nationwide, it was not too much of a change for us because a large portion of our team was used to working remotely, either all of the time or at least portions of the time.” Amy Roller, MAS Sales Support Manager HALO Branded Solutions Kansas City, Missouri FEATURE | Resilient And Resourceful 34 | APRIL 2021 |