Must Read | Distributors company only has the structure of a $25-$30 million business. They’ve exceeded that by maximizing efficiencies but recently took on private equity partners to help allow for fuller scale, including the success outside Europe that has been elusive. The injection of private equity cash will be crucial to Cybergroup’s long-term health. But Baumgaertner is banking on another business partner being just as important to the company’s future. *** Last December, I received in the mail a smartly designed, square coffee table book about a 24-year-old Swiss company I’d never heard of: bluesign (PPAI 825888). The firm had just joined PPAI as a business services member. Worldwide, it employs more than 100 environmental experts, many of them Ph.D. chemical scientists who work closely with manufacturers and suppliers to ensure production meets bluesign’s rigorous environmental, worker and consumer safety requirements in pursuit of textile materials certifications. If the manufacturing and chemistry don’t meet the criteria, bluesign creates a roadmap for improvement. The book tells the story of bluesign’s vision for an apparel supply chain that has a greatly reduced impact on the planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants, people included. Its pages have been earmarked for me by semiretired American promo vet Rod Brown, CAS, 2020’s winner of the PPAI H. Ted Olson Humanitarian Award. In these golden years, Brown is taking some time for leisure, but he also travels the world building homes in developing areas, professing the need for more sustainability in promotional products and leveraging his connections to help people driving at that goal. We meet in Las Vegas the day after my C-suite dinner, where Brown introduces me to several bluesign operatives. Soon joined by Sustainability-focused PPAI business services member bluesign is the textile arm of SGS, a global leader in testing, inspection and certification. 56 • JUNE 2024 • PPAI
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