Awards October 26, 2026
Counselor Power 50 2026: No. 10 Larry Zavadil & Justin Zavadil, ASB
Welcome to the 2026 Counselor Power 50 list, which ranks the most influential people in the promo products industry.
#10 Larry Zavadil & Justin Zavadil
ASB (asi/120075)
Larry Zavadil – Chairman
2025 Rank: #8
Industry Experience: 37 years
Previous Appearances on Counselor Power 50: 20
Justin Zavadil – President & CEO
2025 Rank: #8
Industry Experience: 29 years
Previous Appearances on Counselor Power 50: 12
Counselor Top 40 distributor ASB (asi/120075) executed its leadership succession plan this year, with founder Larry Zavadil becoming chairman and son Justin adding CEO to his title of president. The pair slides two spots on the Counselor Power 50 list but remain in the top 10.
According to Justin, the bigger news wasn’t his new position or even the company rebrand earlier this year, but rather the launch of Canadian Solutions for Business (asi/120086) in late 2024 as well as the successful integration of Dubow Textile.
“CSB was another heavy lift,” the younger Zavadil says, pointing out that the Minnesota firm wasn’t immune to hardships caused by tariffs. “The transition into another country isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. There are so many moving parts, like legal, system upgrades, tax needs, HR, payroll and benefits needs, and many other things that need to be addressed to be successful. Both of these projects have put a serious burden on our company’s resources, and the team has really worked together, because they know we need to push ourselves to become stronger.”
ASB’s international ambitions continue to grow under Justin’s direction. He reveals the distributor is “currently laying the groundwork for a launch into the U.K. in January of 2028, when we plan to complete our first acquisition.” ASB has hired consultants and is setting up the legal and regulatory requirements to best do business in Europe.
Now officially in the captain’s chair at the distributorship, Justin is looking forward to continuing to build on the foundation his father established and he’s added to.
“Our top goal is always to work on the betterment of the culture of ASB,” says Zavadil, Counselor’s 2025 Person of the Year. “We lead this company with our hearts and that will always be the case as long as we’re in charge. ASB is a sales-led organization. Our home office team works directly for our sales associates, who are our biggest customers. We need to keep that in sight while we look for ways to strengthen the company with new offerings and continue to bring in sales associates and organizations into our family.”
AI Perspective
Justin Zavadil: “We remain cautious in our adoption of AI in the workplace. Our focus has mainly been on routine task automation. We’ve found so far that we’ve not replaced a single FTE [full-time equivalent] due to our use of AI, but we’ve been able to make them more productive in the day-to-day. I don’t think we’ve done anything revolutionary with our AI usage yet, but we continue to monitor the tools out there, especially the ones that come with our current third-party software relationships. We will continue to be curious in the marketplace and encourage our employees to use the approved tools in their own time and experiment with how they may make their jobs more efficient.”