Promo Marketing and their parent company NAPCO Media are at an interesting cross-section of makers, manufacturers, distributors (and more), involving all types of media. Moreover, they, like us, keep an eye on trends happening in the industry, plus, they have a keen eye for consumer trends as well.

Today, we’re joined by Michele Bell and Nate Kucsma from ASI. The SOI is a report produced annually by ASI, it was released this week and it’s an incredibly comprehensive report which includes rankings of the top 40 suppliers and distributors and also a wide variety of topics: which categories sold more, verticals, issues facing the industry, more.

Anne Stone is the director of advocacy, member engagement, and education for PPAI, Promotional Product Association International. She guides PPAI’s legislative and government relations efforts, oversees the product responsibility programs, and the Product Responsibility Summit, which we discuss in this episode.

In April, we interviewed Bryan Papé, CEO and founder of MiiR, through a partnership with our friends at Gemline, and we had record attendance at that event but sometimes these conversations are so rich but they disappear into the ether before we have a chance to process what we’ve learned into action so, we’re bringing that chat back to you today!

Today, we’re joined by Nesha Logan. Nesha is the founder of The Village Print Studio, a boutique brand merchandising and creative studio located in South Chicago helping businesses build community through beautiful, branded merchandise.

Jesse Genet is cofounder of Lumi, a Los Angeles company that creates custom packaging for some of the most notable brands in the world, like Parachute, Tuft & Needle. Lumi makes tools that simplify the complex workflows, data, and language of packaging so that brands and manufacturers can work better together.

Josh Wolfe co-owns Sky Punch Creative, a promotional products distributorship, which is about to undergo a rebrand, renaming, and relaunch, but he started his career as a photographer and focused on telling the story of climate change, co-authoring a book on the subject, Climate Change: Picturing the Science.

Curating ideas for a client under the old framework of factory specifics only isn’t enough to achieve their goals nor unlock your best work. Those specs are important, but they are not the most critical parts of the conversion anymore.

In this skucast, we’re chatting with a super panel of social media thinkers, three of the most influential social media managers working for three of the most influential brands in the industry: Aly Brunton, Taylor Borst, and Melissa Newman.

They ship 50,000 boxes a day. That’s 1.2 - 1.3 million units of product a day, with over 2,000 employees, 10 facilities in the US and Canada. Join us as we chat with Dan Pantano of alphabroder.