Our annual picks of the industry’s rising stars – a brave, bold group that’s trailblazing a unique path to success.

Yuhling Lu

Ariel Premium Supply (asi/36730)

A former scientist, Yuhling Lu’s thirst for discovery has yet to be quenched. When she and her husband Tai Lin launched Ariel Premium Supply (asi/36730), they were looking to fund a research project. In the nearly 25 years since, they’ve created thousands of promotional products, established great relationships with distributors, cracked Counselor’s Top 40 suppliers list in 2016 and was named Supplier of the Year in 2015.

The limitless possibilities continue to inspire the Taiwan native. “I never know what the next big thing will be. We were always known for stress relievers and hot/cold packs, but today we sell so much more. It’s motivating to watch how our customers look to us for much more than those things now,” Lu says.

Ariel has experimented with a variety of products over the years as Lu stays on the cutting edge, following hot color trends, technological innovations and popular business processes.

“With a broad and well-designed product collection in place, our plans for the future are to really enhance our customer experience. We want to focus on how we touch the individual distributor employee so that we ultimately earn their trust in our reliability,” Lu says.

Want more Hot List profiles? Of course you do!