Tom Havens has built a distributorship from $0 to more than $25 million in sales.

Now, the promotional products industry veteran will be taking his entrepreneurial acumen to Top 40 supplier Greater Pacific Industries (GPI, asi/58135), where he’s just been appointed senior vice president of sales.

Tom Havens, Greater Pacific Industries.

“Tom is a great fit for this position – strong leadership skills, excellent sales skills, extensive marketing experience, great reputation, knowledge of overseas custom manufacturing, and is intimately familiar with the needs of GPI’s customers,” Greater Pacific shared in a statement.

In the SVP role, Havens will help salespeople gain more clients and win more projects, create a sales training process, and hire sales professionals for all three of GPI’s offices, as well marketing talent to support sales teams. Additionally, he’ll help implement a new enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management system.

Havens’ promo journey began in the 1980s as an account manager at the Top 40 distributorship now known as Nadel (asi/279600). He spent nearly a decade with the California-based firm, where his was among the top five of 120 sales teams.

In 1999, Havens founded distributorship Catalyst Marketing and became the company’s president. Eighteen years into its existence, Catalyst was generating north of $25 million and had 45 employees, five offices across the country and a client base that included household names like Nike, Southwest Airlines, T-Mobile, Topgolf and Pokémon

As the founder, Havens’ role varied from building a strong sales force and creating go-to-market strategies, to motivating employees, working with existing customers, acquiring new clients, and handling balance sheet and cash flow.

In 2017, Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000) acquired Catalyst Marketing. Havens then joined HALO as vice president of client services, a role that had him managing the Sterling, IL-headquartered company’s creative department.

“We are very excited to bring Tom on board,” Greater Pacific said in a statement.

Based on reported 2021 North American promotional product revenue of $45.2 million, Issaquah, WA-headquartered Greater Pacific Industries ranked 37^th on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest suppliers in the industry. The new rankings are due out this summer.