skucast

Molly Dietz, Marketing Manager of the Promotional Division of Strideline Socks, joins us to discuss her role and to share how the company’s retail and promotional divisions seamlessly intersect and reinforce each other, how being hyper-focused often creates the best marketing opportunities, and their plans for incorporating traditional marketing and trade shows into their marketing strategy.

We invited Elizabeth Segran, staff writer for Fast Company and whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Salon and more, to chat about her recent article on conference swag. Mark Graham and Bobby Lehew chat with Elizabeth about what motivated her to write the article, the impact of fast fashion on sustainability and its counterpart in promotional products, the need for transparenc...

In this episode, Jason Lucash, CEO, CMO, and Co-founder of Origaudio, discusses the marketing decisions that have led to Origaudio becoming one of the most original brands in the promotional products industry.

In this episode, we explore what this new era of collaboration looks like with Adam Walterscheid, CEO of T Tycoon and YourCo, and Ben Taylor the Chief Marketing Officer at BamBams. Adam and Ben share the story of a complex project that would become CoLab, a service designed for distributors to build a completely custom product collection that transcends traditional supply lines while sharing creat...

In this episode, Bobby Lehew sits down with Mark Graham, commonsku's co-founder and chief platform officer, as we chat with Memo Kahan about the highs and lows of his business journey and his thoughts on how the recession refined and focused their value proposition, what it takes to succeed in sales and the advice Memo would give to his past self or young entrepreneurs.

In today's episode, Bobby Lehew, the chief content officer at commonsku, Mark Graham, commonsku’s co-founder and chief platform officer, and Winston Lo, president of Creative Boulevard, explore this article and the potential ramifications but moreover, the opportunity this moment presents for many in the business.

With 10 million in sales, 22 employees, and 17 years in the business, the brother and sister team of Daniel Gardner and Carolina Junghans lead Nashville based distributorship Blink Marketing and for the last several years have experienced tremendous growth.

Bobby Lehew sits down with several attendees of #skucamp2018 to talk about what they were inspired by but more importantly, what they plan to change in their business moving forward!

Adam Kovar is the Vice President of Marketing at ETS Express, one of the industry's most admired and innovative drinkware companies. In this episode, Mark Graham, commonsku's chief platform officer, sits down with Adam to discuss how Prop 65 has improved ETS, knowing your value and the confidence to believe in your company and your product and much more!

Ryan Moor is the CEO and founder of Ryonet, a company that grew from shirt printing in a garage in 2004 to a business with annual revenue of over $50 million. In 2017, Ryonet co-founded Allmade® Apparel, a living wage and sustainable apparel brand. Ryan will be a keynote speaker at skucon in Las Vegas on January 13th. In this episode, I sit down with Ryan to talk about his journey and how to catal...

In this episode, we sit down with Stephen Holden, VP of Operations at Holden Brand, to talk not only about the legacy sales at Holden and his experience at launching an e-commerce platform, but also how his adventurous life outside of work, fuels his entrepreneurial spirit.

Joseph Sommer is a 29-year-old entrepreneur and the founder of Whitestone Branding, a boutique branded products agency, in New York City. In this episode, we chat with Joe about how this failure ended up shaping his success and charting a new path that led to significant growth.

How does collaboration fuel creativity? This is the subject of an epic conversation between Mark Graham and I and seven industry friends, including Denise Taschereau from Faireware, Stephen Musgrave from RIGHTSLEEVE, as well as Jasmine Keen, Alex Symms, and Pierre Martichoux from Chameleon Like.

In this episode, Mark Graham, commonsku's co-founder and Chief Platform Officer, sits down with RJ Hagel of Goldstar to discuss the obstacles and opportunities in marketing pens, growing beyond their staple products and much more!

In this episode, Mark Graham and Bobby Lehew continue the conversation about why e-commerce hasn't consumed the industry and yet how it has affected B2B buying habits. Join them for a discussion on the challenges why customers choose e-commerce over a traditional distributor's selling process, engaging the customer to resolve real business objectives and much more!

In today's episode of skucast we sit down with Monarch and Company's Yvonne Lyngaas Zeman, founder and CEO, and Anna Nguyen, COO and Account Director. Monarch and Company is a creative merchandising agency based in Chicago and Denver, that has grown from a 1-person company to a multi-million dollar distributorship. Today we discuss qualifying the right type of client to work with, moving from surv...

We continue our Supplier CMO Series with Julie Fritsch, the Vice President of Marketing at Starline Inc., a Top 40 Supplier and 2017 Distributor Choice Award Winner. Julie joins Mark Graham, commonsku’s co-founder and Chief Platform Officer, to discuss why she believes artists make the best marketers, marketing strategies for small promotional products suppliers and much more!

In this episode, we sit down with Pop! Promo’s Director of Sales Rory Young and Senior Account Executive Sarah Smith to consider a different perspective: Pop! Promos is largely comprised of millennials, and we wanted to explore what that looked like from a sales perspective and consider what it means to sell to the millennial market.

Gold Bond, Inc is a Top 40 supplier, multiple time PPAI supplier star winner, and multiple ASI distributor choice award winner. We sat down with Mark and Britney Godsey, leaders of the 70-year old company, to discuss their process for staying current on industry trends, how the company changed their marketing strategy and much more!

Adam Walterscheid is the CEO of T-Shirt Tycoon Solutions, Inc., a private label supplier located in Garland, Texas. We sat down with Adam to discuss the shape and story of his business journey, his perspective on the future of the promotional products industry and more!

Mark Graham and Bobby Lehew had the privilege of visiting with Pierre Martichoux, Founder and CEO of Chameleon Like, and his team in their Gilroy, CA factory headquarters just 20 miles south of Silicon Valley. Join them for a thought-provoking conversation on how to blend art and commerce into a thriving enterprise that keeps you young-at-heart!

Welcome to a new series designed to uncover the personalities of the industry's most prominent and successful supplier marketers and to explore the role that marketing plays in bringing promotional products to the market. Brandon Brown began his career with Snugz USA ten years ago, working in the marketing department from the ground up, building what would eventually become one of the most imagina...

Russ Mogell is the founder of Seven Sourcing, a factory-direct import company that assists promotional product distributors with the development, manufacture, and importation of custom, branded merchandise for leading brands including Pepsi, Budweiser, Verizon, Disney & the NFL. Before Seven Sourcing, Russ was the 3rd generation owner of supplier, Toppers. Sold in 1999, Toppers was the 5th largest...

Sara Webb began her career in the industry as a college student working for Nevins Group. Fast forward, and in 2013, Sarah opened InTandem Promotions, a creative and vibrant promotional products distributorship located in the Atlanta, GA area. We talked with Sarah about her entrepreneurial journey as well as lessons learned along the way, including: -Fast-growth and adapting to change -Hiring and...

Friends since the 4th grade, Craig Dunlap and Kirk Meyer have led their $8 million dollar distributorship through a host of changes, most notably a conscious cut in 30% of their revenues which led eventually to a 30% increase in gross profit. We sat down with Crag and Kirk to explore why and how they decided to narrow their focus on the right kind of client and how they have managed to build a suc...