Awards October 26, 2026
Counselor Power 50 2026: No. 1 Jeremy Lott, SanMar
Welcome to the 2026 Counselor Power 50 list, which ranks the most influential people in the promo products industry.
#1 Jeremy Lott
SanMar (asi/84863) – President/CEO
2025 Rank: #1
Industry Experience: 25 years
Previous Appearances on Counselor Power 50: 13
For the second year in a row, Jeremy Lott resides at the top of the Counselor Power 50 list, and it’s no surprise why. As the president and CEO of Counselor Top 40 supplier SanMar (asi/84863), the industry’s largest supplier by revenue, Lott remains a sought-after thought leader who received exceptionally high marks on the Counselor Power 50 survey, both from fellow Power 50 members and the industry at large.
The greatest trial Lott faced has nothing to do with his professional responsibilities, as he and his family endured the sudden and heartbreaking loss of his teenage son Elliot.
On the business front, SanMar had to navigate significant changes in global trade as well as the impact of tariffs across its supply chain. But, Lott tells Counselor, the team has “worked together to diversify sourcing, strengthen partnerships around the world and carefully manage inventory” to continue meeting customer demand without disruption.
Reflecting on that diligence, “We’re proud to have delivered double-digit growth [in 2026] in a year that tested a lot of businesses,” Lott says. (The company also increased sales by 8% in 2025, reaching an estimated total of $4.1 billion in revenue.) “We’ve never lost sight of the basics, and that gives me a lot of optimism about what we can accomplish together in 2027.”
However, Lott hasn’t been content to play it safe. The Issaquah, WA-headquartered firm stunned the industry when it announced the acquisition of fashion basics supplier Bella+Canvas (asi/39590), which will continue to operate as an independent brand under the SanMar umbrella. SanMar also forged an exclusive partnership with MiiR to carry its newly launched soft goods and apparel collection. Starting in 2027, SanMar will become the exclusive supplier for MiiR’s entire portfolio, including drinkware. The expansion marks the apparel supplier’s entry into the hard goods space, but Lott noted at a PRINTING United Expo panel that enough of its customers had invested in the types of equipment required to decorate drinkware that the product pivot made sense. As Lott put it, “Why wouldn’t they buy it from us?”
AI Perspective
“I think it’s really important, especially in my position, that we’re being super thoughtful about how we think about and use AI,” Lott said during a fireside chat at September’s PRINTING United Expo. “I've been thinking a lot about this because there are many of us rushing in and thinking ‘Well, we have to implement AI.’ In fact, that’s maybe where my head was even a year ago. We’re actually taking a step back. How are we using tools in a really smart way to help make us better and more efficient at doing our jobs really well? That’s how we’ve always employed technology. That’s not a new thing. That goes back 50 years.
“We do a contest every year – a trip for employees. They get to go visit one of our manufacturing sites around the world and do a community service project in that location. It’s a really neat trip. Most of our employees don’t get to go travel. This year, they just got back from Sri Lanka. It was an amazing trip. The employees submit applications and I read them. This year, in the first one, I was like, “Wow, some of this is really well written.’ And I got the second, and I was like, “Oh, wow. This is really well written too.’ This was the first year people had used AI to write their applications, and they all sounded exactly the same. You could tell it was AI-written because I didn’t get any sense of who they were. I just got what ChatGPT thought they should write about.
“I think it’s a challenge and a real problem if we lose as companies what makes us special – the DNA, our people – because we’re employing AI in ways that takes that away. We just have to be super thoughtful.
“We get thousands upon thousands of orders every year, and AI can help with that. One of the things we’re working on right now is a program where we can start getting insights into changes in customer behavior in real time. So if brown is selling better than it has historically, AI can see that really quickly and can help us make better decisions.”