Global sourcing has been the dominant topic of not just 2025 but also the past few days with President Donald Trump announcing new heightened tariffs on China. It was against this backdrop that a panel of distributor and supplier leaders took to the stage at the 2025 ASI Power Summit to address how they’re navigating the challenges of tariffs, shifting supply chains and sensitive topics like selling and sourcing direct.

An ASI Power Summit panel on global sourcing featured (from left to right) Moderator and ASI Vice Chairman Matthew Cohn; Terry McGuire, senior vice president, supplier relations, of HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000); Todd Sachs, senior director of operations for Counselor Top 40 distributor BAMKO (asi/131431); Neil Ringel, CEO of PCNA (asi/66887); and Heather Smartt, global head of Goldstar (asi/73295).

In discussing how Counselor Top 40 supplier PCNA (asi/66887) is dealing with the shifting tariffs on promotional products, CEO and Counselor Power 50 member Neil Ringel said the company was able to meter out price increases instead of all at once by blending pre-tariffed inventory with higher-tariffed goods. He likened it to Whac-A-Mole as the tariff increases shift from country to country but stressed that having ample inventory is key, and you can’t burn the relationship with a country only to go back if the tariffs are reduced.

“From a supplier standpoint,” he said, “it is a little bit of a crapshoot, but you’ve got to have a consistent supply chain to satisfy your customer’s demands, most of which are one to five days out from when their customer needs it.”

Counselor Power 50 member Heather Smartt, global head of Counselor Top 40 supplier Goldstar (asi/73295), revealed her company didn’t have ample inventory stateside when the tariffs hit, and it caused the supplier to raise prices twice this year. In the company’s favor, though, is its long-term strategy to reduce its dependence on China and move into India and Vietnam. Even still, Smartt acknowledged that shifting sourcing to other countries takes time and poses challenges.

“It takes three years to get a factory up and running to understand our industry, understand our business and to our quality expectations,” said Smartt, “because there are specific product categories you can’t source outside of China and take the risk, especially with something like drinkware.”

Terry McGuire, senior vice president, supplier relations, for Counselor Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000) said the fact that several panelists at the conference mentioned their companies were growing this year instead of experiencing severe declines can be attributed to how distributors and suppliers navigated this crisis together.

“In the 26 years that I’ve been at HALO,” he said, “I’ve never seen that level of collaboration, that candid transparency between our suppliers and between us internally for what could have been a very existential threat for our industry.”

Moderator and ASI Vice Chairman Matthew Cohn asked the distributors on the panel about sourcing direct.

Todd Sachs, senior director of operations for Counselor Top 40 distributor BAMKO (asi/131431), said the company sources the majority of its products from North American suppliers, and “we’re relying on our domestic suppliers more and more every year, especially as we’re doing more enterprise stores.” He said BAMKO does source highly specialized custom products through its overseas offices it established two decades ago, and said not as many suppliers at the time had the specialized capabilities the distributor needed. “As more of the suppliers here have gained those capabilities,” he added, “we’ve actually moved away from [sourcing direct] a lot more.”

McGuire said the distributor sources about 90% of its orders through North American suppliers and will go to domestic suppliers first to see if they can meet the distributor’s needs on quality, delivery and price. In most cases and increasingly, he added, most suppliers are delivering.

“When we have those orders, especially the large quantity ones … we will always go first to our domestic suppliers,” he said. “And the difference between now and 10 years ago is many of them have the capability to do that.”

When given the chance to explain why distributors should go to suppliers instead of sourcing overseas, Smartt mentioned that Goldstar has 260 products that are available globally to fulfill in one country and invoice in the other. And beyond that, doing business with a North American supplier reduces the risk for distributors since the supplier is responsible for the importing. “It’s all about ease of doing business,” she said, “and we’re taking that risk away from them.”

Ringel echoed those sentiments. “If our value proposition is one of inventory, speed, reliability, compliance and sustainability,” he said, “then there’s more reason for distributors to come to us than to run the risk of a 60-day supply chain and for something to be stuck on a boat and get a tariff perhaps applied to it.”