PromoKitchen Podcast

In this new series, Stories from the Floor, we go behind the scenes. In this episode, Mark Graham (commonsku) and Johanna Gottlieb (Axis Promotions) sit down with Eliseo Cervantes and Stephanie Esse from Chameleon Like. Stephanie is a Pre-Production Manager and Eliseo is the Production Manager with extensive production experience such as Paper Cutting, Machine operator, Die-cutting Press Operator,...

Managing mental health in the workplace is more important than ever before. Fortunately, the stigma around mental health is starting to dissipate as society accepts that mental health is no different than one's physical health. In this episode, Mark Graham and Robert Fiveash sit down with Shaun Lichtenberger, President of Brand Blvd, to discuss their forward thinking approach to mental health in t...

On Sept 14, Hub Promotional Group rocked the industry by announcing that they had acquired Origaudio and that Jason Lucash and Mike Szymczak were joining the Hub management team. To some, it felt like Origaudio would never sell, to others they felt that Jason and Mike might not fit in at a more traditional, larger supplier. So in true PromoKitchen fashion, we wanted to get to the bottom of it to f...

There were so many great answers, we had to do a bonus deeper dive as Jay Busselle talks with Johanna Gottlieb of Axis Promotions about prospecting and cold calling.

On this week's #Promochat Deep Dive, Jim Jay Busselle talks with Reagan K Hartman about how miscommunications can cause roadblocks in our productivity.

This week's #TeaserTuesday deep dive, Danny Rosin of BrandFuel talked to Kate from Clearmount about hiring horror stories. Be warned, their stories get a wee bit PG-13.

Each Wednesday at 3:00 PM EST, PromoKitchen hosts a new #promochat on Twitter. All industry professionals are invited to participate. Each week brings a new topic that is relevant to improving the promotional products industry. For this week's Teaser Tuesday, Kate Plummer of Clearmount talks with Marshall Atkinson of Atkinson Consulting as a more in-depth follow-up to one of Marshall's answers abo...

Listen to our #promochat follow-up from 8/8/18 as Charity Gibson talks with Bill Petrie about mentorship.

On this episode, Mark Graham (co-founder commonsku) down with Paul Bellantone (CEO, PPAI and Dale Denham (Chairman of the Board, PPAI) for a discussion about how PPAI advocates for our industry and promotes an environment of success for its members. The impetus for this conversation was a Planet Money podcast\called Rigging the Economy. The episode looked at how some industries use regulation as a...

On today’s episode Mark Graham (commonsku) and Danny Rosin (Brand Fuel) welcome Luke Freeman to the podcast. Luke is the President of Fort Lauderdale based distributor Wizard Creations. Luke played an instrumental role in rallying his community in the aftermath of the tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Luke brought his community together to raise funds for the victims of the tragedy as w...

In this episode of the PromoKitchen podcast, Mark Graham sits down with Gene Geiger, CEO of Geiger. Gene was last on the program in January 2015 and since then he’s been busy making headlines by expanding Geiger’s presence beyond the US. Specifically, just this past week Gene announced that Geiger was merging with the UK’s largest family owned distributor, BTC Group. During their conversation, Mar...

Hello everyone, welcome to the PromoKitchen podcast. We are a community inspired conversation featuring boundary pushers, rabble rousers, freaks and geeks who are shaking up the $21 BN promotional products industry.   My name is Mark Graham co-founder of commonsku and today I get the opportunity to speak with one of our industry’s foremost online community builders, Mike Schenker.   In his day job...

In this special episode, we take a close look at some major industry news just released moments ago, the coming together of alphabroder and Prime Line.

Mark Graham, co-founder of commonsku, speaks with Jonathan Isaacson, CEO of Gemline, about an exciting brand partnership that Gemline just struck with RuMe Brandsuite.

A conversation with Alan Tabasky, Vice President of BEL USA to the podcast. BEL USA is the parent company of BEL Promo, Discountmugs.com, and Branders.com. BEL USA has grown tremendously over the past 5 years and currently has almost 900 domestic employees as well as an overseas office and division. BEL Promo is an industry leader in the Promotional Products Industry in both price and production c...

Joining us in the guest chair today is Marc Harris, Managing Director of TradeMarc Consulting International. Marc provides senior level executive consulting services for consumer product industry clients with an emphasis on strategic marketing procurement, supply chain management and sourcing of marketing services, including promotional products.

PromoKitchen Podcast #128 | Sexual Harassment - More than just #metoo by PromoKitchen

Hear how PPAI CEO, Paul Bellantone, has responded to the Las Vegas shooting at Mandalay Bay to ensure the safety at PPAI Expo 2018.

Mark Graham, co-founder of commonsku, talks with Ted Church and Anna Sork of Anthem Branding to the podcast today. Anthem is a fiercely unique promotional agency based in Boulder, Colorado.

PromoKitchen Jason Lucash and Mark Graham are at it again with the 4th installment of the Rebel Edition of the PK Podcast. Rebels on this podcast are Sam Kabert and Harry Ein. Shout out to SanMar for their very generous financial support of the PromoKitchen podcast.

Mark Graham, co-founder of commonsku,  talks with Andy Thorne from Outstanding Branding on the PromoKitchen podcast. Andy is one of the industry’s most outrageously, loveable characters. He’s not afraid to speak his mind, he makes friends easily and,  in his words, he’s pretty good at getting people to “say yes to him.” Andy, along with his business partner Sarah Penn, launched Outstanding Brandin...

Welcome to the PromoKitchen podcast. Chefs Bill Petrie and Kirby Hasseman. PPAI has a long history of executing education and networking events to foster growth within the promotional products industry. Recently, PPAI held an event in Denver targeted at young promo professionals called SPARK. This event was created by – and targeted to – millennials who comprise the largest portion of the workforc...

Join Mark Graham, co-founder of commonsku and fellow PK chef and long time collaborator, Danny Rosin, co-President of Brand Fuel. In today’s episode, we take a hard look at one of the most prominent yet controversial tools used to source promotional products today: the RFP (commonly known as the Request for Proposal). Like them or hate them, RFPs now define how many end clients source promotional...

Not sure there are words that could adequately intro what you are about to hear. PromoKitchen Chefs Jason Lucash and Mark Graham roundtable with industry troublemakers Renya Nelson, Chris Ferriter, and Stephen McFadden for this mind-blowing third episode in the Rebel Edition of the PK Podcast. Listen. Learn. Engage. Also, a heartfelt thank you to SanMar for their generous financial support of this...

Mark Graham and Danny Rosin co-host this very special episode. When we started PromoKitchen in 2011, our mandate was to create an open dialog about the white elephants in our industry. Over the past 100+ episodes of this podcast, we have looked at everything from the incursions of Alibaba and Amazon to supply chain disruption to the changing behaviors of end clients. We pride ourselves on addressi...