Must Read | New World Order Kaplan’s hopes and dreams finally came to fruition. Announced November 14, the coming together of the two technology platforms will target the online needs of promotional product distributors, apparel decorators and team dealers. “We’re able to combine the best in class on both sides and bring them together and offer the best technology and blaze this path for group commerce and change the game,” Kaplan says. ‘The Perfect Partner’ Any acquisition between two successful companies takes some amount of humility. BrightStores has grown in business every single year since it was founded in 1999, according to Ignacek-Sutton, and by any reasonable measure, it had the experience, the steady staff and the clients to continue to compete in the marketplace. It always offered to clients what Ignacek-Sutton refers to as “white glove support,” holding their hand through the process of making technology less complicated. In the promo world, that approach went a long way. But both companies were led by people who believed in the benefits of conversations within industries, and in the past few years the leadership teams got together at The PPAI Expo, chatting about common problems and possible solutions. Mutual clients would bring each company up to the other, identifying gaps on each side and reminding one company what the other excelled at. Executives at distributors, decorators or dealers were politely asking OMG if they ever considered partnering with BrightStores in some capacity. This is where OMG’s humility comes in. “We’re very honest with ourselves here internally,” Kaplan says. “We know what we’re great at, and we know what we’re not great at. We understand that Bright Stores does things that we do not do, cannot do and do not offer.” OMG approached BrightStores, not as victors in a competition but by laying out what the two could accomplish together. To the BrightStores leaders, like Ignacek-Sutton, who had been with the company since the early days, this was enticing. Ignacek-Sutton, who ultimately called the acquisition “wonderfully synergistic,” has seen the industry change over the years. She still sees it as small businesses doing what they could do with a small group of people: “That’s what BrightStores was.” The client relationships were already there for BrightStores, as was the savvy to move Matt Kaplan, OMG president Mykayla Goodwin, OMG vice president of strategy Tanya Ignacek-Sutton, vice president of BrightStores 72 • JANUARY 2023 • PPAI
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