PPAI • JUNE 2026 • 55 Distributors | Must Read DISTRIBUTOR NO. 3 HALO The Next HALO At one of merch’s most influential companies, first-year CEO Jim Hilt takes aim at industry-defining norms. By Josh Ellis He doesn’t usually drink caffeine, but coming off an 11-hour overnight flight from Tokyo with his family, Jim Hilt does indulge himself with a Diet Coke. Yet he has more than enough discipline to avoid stress calories in his lunch order: a seasonal salad. He adds grilled chicken and asks our waiter to hold the beets. He must be tired, but he makes absolutely no show of it and has plenty of energy to carry the conversation. My questions meander to buy him time for a few bites, but he pushes the salad away after eating just about half. HALO’s new CEO optimizes in life and business. I mention how the company’s announcement last August that he would succeed Marc Simon noted his “operational discipline,” as all CEO hiring press releases now do. Hilt gets the joke but says it’s a real thing. This is what it looks like. We’ve met at a resort in wine country while HALO conducts a sales leadership off-site. It’s about an hour from Hilt’s home in San Francisco. This is the kind of place designed to slow things down. The landscape suggests leisure – rolling vineyards, sweet air, a place of quiet escape. Vacation is over for Hilt, though. He is attentive and deliberate, answering directly while connecting the industry’s biggest concepts. We’ll only meet for lunch, but he’s not at all rushed. There’s no performance to it. No need to prove anything. He wears a HALO-branded Vineyard Vines vest over a crisp polo, the uniform of a leader who understands both where he is and what’s expected of him. Fifty years of age, he’s comfortable, but not casual. Professional, but not rigid. Everything feels intentional. This is his first spring leading HALO (PPAI 106462, Platinum), the Sterling, Illinois-headquartered distributor that has spent decades establishing itself as one of the most powerful and consequential organizations in the branded merchandise industry. For much of that time, HALO has been defined by its leaders, their relationships and an entrepreneurial sales force capable of delivering for clients through a combination of experience, instinct and, often, sheer effort. Hilt doesn’t reject any of that. He seems to respect it deeply. But sitting across from him, it becomes clear that he is focused on something else entirely. HALO has been defined by its leaders, their relationships and an entrepreneurial sales force capable of delivering for clients through a combination of experience, instinct and, often, sheer effort.
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