58 • JUNE 2026 • PPAI Must Read | Distributors team, all professing alignment with the new direction. “It’s a mindset change that [Hilt] has been preaching for six months,” Mounger says. “And I bet everybody understands where we’re going as a company. Like, we’re not debating our goals and objectives.” This is where professionalism, as Hilt and his leadership team describe it, takes on a more concrete meaning. Some of the highest executive presence in the industry resides at HALO and through its sales ranks. But this is not merely a matter of polish or speaking tone or dress shoes. It is about building an organization that delivers its best work not occasionally but always, and without slowing down. The new HALO expects more of itself and more for itself, and more for the industry as a whole. This means more comprehensive thinking about how physical expressions define brands. It’s more consistency in how clients are served, more structure in supporting or supplementing a sales force and more intentionality in how decisions are made and executed. The need for more changes the standard. This is the shift inside HALO and, if its bet is correct, the entire merch marketplace. For decades, industry progress has been defined by the products themselves, the sourcing, the logistics of getting from concept to delivery with a smile. Inside the industry, that work has always been more complex than it appears. That gap is becoming harder to sustain. HALO’s response is to reposition what it provides for clients based on their needs, an attempt to become a more comprehensive agency than a servant. “We’re not order takers, we’re solution sellers,” Mounger says. “The goal is to get to the table prior to [clients] thinking, ‘I need product for this.’” It’s scheduling the strategy meeting, not answering the call. Mounger continues: “Understand their objective.” The objective, in this context, is not an item. It is the outcome the item is meant to support – a brand moment, an employee experience or a customer connection. The product becomes one part of a broader strategy, which HALO and other distributors thinking broadly can help clients drive. Hilt describes it as a need for the industry to change the dialogue. This version of the work requires deeper understanding, greater preparation and further alignment across teams. It demands capabilities that go beyond sourcing and fulfillment into creative, technology, data and strategy. And it changes where value is created. In a transactional model, value is often measured in efficiency and cost. In a strategic model, it is measured in its impact on the brand, on the campaign, on the client’s ability to connect with its audience. The People Business 1.0 If there is a place where HALO’s evolution is most delicate, it is here. HALO’s account executives operate with the independence and expectations of true business owners. They drive relationships and succeed on their own terms. “[Simon] was a firm believer that the account executive is the customer – the seller is the customer,” says one HALO leader. “Jim comes at it completely different and says the [final] customer is our customer.” And so the original decentralized Erin DeCesare
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzU4OQ==