It all works. Apart from understandable downturns during the Great Recession and pandemic, the growth trajectory has been steady for these past two decades. 4imprint’s stock opened June 1 trading at $57.20 per share, nearly a 3,500% gain from 20 years prior. Much of the acceleration began in 2018, when the company announced its five-year goal to reach $1 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2022. In spite of all challenges in the interim, it always seemed for certain that 4imprint would deliver the goods. The Grand Plan Covid sluggishness hampered its first quarter last year, but 4imprint quickly put itself on pace to be the first distributor to accomplish 10 figures in 2022, announcing in May that it expected to reach the milestone. David Seekings, another exec who traces back to the 1990s and 4imprint's CFO since 2000, cited a “particularly strong finish to the year.” A rival in the race to reach $1 billion first, Illinois-headquartered HALO got there last year as well. But 4imprint topped its sales by more than $100 million. Seekings said the accomplishment “reflects clarity of strategy, the flexibility and resilience of the business model and the outstanding dedication of the team.” For a big, hairy, audacious goal to have been not only met, but significantly exceeded, it was actually more difficult than one might have predicted in 2018. When 4imprint announced its $1 billion target, it was already coming off a record year, having earned $608 million in 2017. That grew to just shy of $715 million in 2018. The $839.2 million in 2019 was more than double what it had earned five years prior, in 2014. Needless to say, 2020 didn’t go so well. The world changed with the onset of the pandemic. And suddenly the results started to change among promo’s largest distributors. 4imprint’s sales dropped almost 35%. HALO held steadier, and a few of the largest distributors even grew their businesses. According to the annual Counselor ranking of promo distributors’ sales, 4imprint came in third for 2019 revenue, and only narrowly ahead of fourth place. While much of the industry had pivoted to items in immediate demand in 2020, such as masks and hand sanitizer, 4imprint did little business in PPE. There were other things 4imprint refused to change. “We laid nobody off. We made it very clear that we were going to hang onto our team. And we continued to market,” Lyons-Tarr says. “Our philosophy throughout was that this will recover, and when it does, we need to put Distributors | Must Read Today, 4imprint's Oshkosh headquarters sits mostly empty. Younger workers don't seem to miss it. Seventy-four percent of the company's workforce is under age 30, the most of any PPAI 100 distributor. PPAI • JULY 2023 • 55
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