Goldstar (asi/73295) has announced the promotion of Howard Cubberly to general manager of Goldstar Global. Formerly the general manager of Goldstar North America, the 25-year industry veteran will take responsibility for all of the San Diego-based supplier’s business, including Goldstar Europe.

Howard Cubberly

“I am excited at the opportunity to bring the Goldstar brand together globally and to leverage our ‘Simplicity Ease of Doing Business Model’ in all markets to meet the growing distributor demand for international distribution,” Cubberly told Counselor.

As a result of Cubberly’s promotion, Colin Loughran, general manager of Goldstar Europe, will continue his management role, but will also take on the additional responsibilities of global product design and merchandising. RJ Hagel, marketing manager for Goldstar North America and a member of Counselor’s 2019 Hot List, will now also manage the Goldstar EU marketing team as global marketing manager.

Under his five years of leadership at Goldstar North America, Cubberly has consistently grown the business by double digits year over year. He has revitalized the brand with expanded products, decoration and services and restructured the sales, marketing and service teams.

“Goldstar will work to leverage technology in all of our processes to shrink response times, production times and delivery times, as well as communicate electronically with our customers for best in class service levels,” Cubberly says.

“We will continue expanding our factory rep sales team in all countries who build great relationships with our distributor partners and share the value we can bring to them with our tremendous manufacturing/decoration capabilities in three plants servicing North America and Europe. We will continue our commitment to having the largest writing instrument selection combined with the most decoration methods in house, including our proprietary SimpliColor full color 360 decoration, full color inkjet, laser engraving, silkscreening and pad printing all available with standard rush service. We will also look to make a large subset of products available for drop shipping from the nearest plant to service our distributor partners who are looking for a consistent experience and solutions for their international customers.”

According to 2019 State of the Industry data, more than half of suppliers (60%) don’t sell outside the United States, and most (70%) don’t plan on expanding beyond where they’re currently operating. However, several Top 40 suppliers seem to be increasing their focus on international business. Cubberly says it’s a matter of affording overhead for regional production/decoration, supply chain/inventory considerations, capacity planning, languages/translations, currency exchange and other complexities.

“While all suppliers are looking for the next opportunity to scale, not all are fortunate to have the existing infrastructure that we do, with our plants, sales and service teams already in place in both markets,” Cubberly says. “Really, it is about end-user demand as they look for international distribution without increased costs in promotional products. Our larger distributor customers have been sharing this need and we hope our plan is consistent with our efforts to increase our value for them.”