Steve Paradiso has retired as president/CEO of Top 40 promotional products distributor ePromos Promotional Products (asi/188515).

Steve Paradiso

Paradiso, an industry veteran and a member of Counselor’s Power 50, a ranking of the most influential people in promo, said it was simply the right time to move on.

“We’ve built a very strong rhythm as a company and have an absolutely fantastic leadership team in place that’s excellent at collaborating to execute on our goals,” Paradiso said.

To that point: ePromos is not looking to replace Paradiso or hire a new president/CEO.

Rather, the company is being led by an executive management team that consists of Jeff Pinsky, cofounder and executive vice president; Ken Domnitz, chief financial officer; Tamara Borello, chief operating officer; Colleen Heikka, chief marketing officer; Nick Kiefer, chief sales officer; and Steven Stanley, senior vice president of technology. Borello said this team has already been steering the ship at ePromos for about four months.

Jason Robbins, ePromos founder and former CEO, continues to have an interest in the firm but is not involved in the day-to-day operations. He pulled back from those daily duties when Paradiso became CEO in 2019.

“We thank Steve for his contributions to ePromos and wish him the very best in his retirement,” Borello said. “The ePromos business model is built on vision, critical thinking, strategy and execution, which will continue to guide not only our decision making, but our ability to move with speed, scale, flexibility and replication.”

Tamara Borello, chief operating officer, ePromos

Paradiso leaves a company that’s continuing to grow. While ePromos didn’t wish to publicly share a specific number, the company noted that its 2020 sales are up year over year compared to 2019 – an anomaly for promo in a COVID-ravaged year in which annual distributor sales were collectively down 44.4% in the second quarter. Borello said the company’s ability to quickly pivot to personal protective equipment has been essential to the strong sales performance.

“Now we’re also starting to see an acceleration in sales of more traditional promotional products,” said Borello, noting that ePromos is on track to surpass its sales goal for the year.

In 2019, St. Cloud, MN-based ePromos generated North American promotional product revenue of $61 million, good enough to rank the company at 31st on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest distributors in the industry. The 2019 sales tally was 1.7% better than 2018, and part of ePromos’ five-year average annual growth rate of 7% through last year.  

Paradiso joined ePromos in 2012. He served as company president until becoming president and CEO last year. Prior to joining the firm, Paradiso spent nearly six years at Ohio-based Top 40 distributor Touchstone (asi/345631), where he was chief operating officer for about five years, as well as president. Other career highlights include serving as president of Cyrk, a company that produced Nike’s very first bag line on Paradiso’s watch, among other highlights.

Paradiso is proud that where he’s gone professionally, growth has followed. For instance, he related that when he came to ePromos the company was producing annual sales of about $16 million. Fast-forward seven years and the distributorship’s annual revenue was nearly quadruple that.

Paradiso was also proud that ePromos is one of the top e-commerce-driven distributors in the industry, while also having a strong agency-style offering centered on providing customized merchandise and fulfillment solutions to enterprise clients.

“With an amazing team, you can achieve a lot,” Paradiso said.

Since retiring this autumn Paradiso has been busy with consultant work, helping a friend to execute the sale of a ventilator business. Exactly what the future holds remains to be determined. He’s enjoyed the down time and slower pace of his early retirement, but admits he’s already getting a bit antsy. Nothing is definite, but he could consider doing something on the supply side of the business.

One thing is sure, though: Paradiso has enjoyed his time in promo.

“I love the industry and the people in it,” he said. “It’s such a unique business to be in.”