Siloed communication lines are inefficient for any industry. They waste time, resources, and labor. They also manage to leave room for confusion and inaccurate information distribution simultaneously.
PromoStandards is a nonprofit organization that develops and implements practical electronic communication standards for custom products industries.
PromoStandards is growing in membership, increasing the number of standards, and expanding the standards’ adoption to more organizations to help solve industry pain points, like:
- Inefficient complex multi-level industry relationships (orchestrating entities, products, protocols, and procedures),
- A lack of product information transparency,
- Inefficient and outdated proprietary supplier systems,
- And inferior supplier, decorator, and distributor management resources.
As of January 2023, PromoStandards has over 200 member organizations and thousands of adopters in multiple industries worldwide, enabling the transmission of billions of dollars in transactions.
Please keep reading to learn more about our organization’s operations, history, and leadership!
What is PromoStandards?
We are member-driven and volunteer-run. Membership is open to any organization wishing to utilize or contribute to developing open standards that benefit all industry professionals.
PromoStandards does not provide business software. Instead, we publish technical specifications businesses can incorporate to improve their existing software.
Our organization has three main goals:
- Develop Industry Standards
- Facilitate Third-Party Service Providers
- Sponsors Educational Events.
The educational events are valuable resources that assist other organizations in implementing integration protocols, providing a level playing field for everyone in the industry.
How Do We Develop Standards?
PromoStandards is dedicated to developing open standards by leveraging the Open-Source Initiative.
Open Standards mutually benefit all parties that utilize them, mirroring PromoStandards’ drive to improve communication efficiency and resolve pain points for industry professionals.
PromoStandards’ Standard-Development Process:
- We create a user story describing a user persona’s (perspective user) goal and the problem preventing them from achieving it, followed by a vision of success that solves the user persona’s dilemma.
- The Board of Directors presides over the Standards Committee to form workgroups to draft the standards.
- Eligible PromoStandards Members ratify the Standards Committee’s drafted standards.
- Once ratified, the standards become available to any industry professional who wishes to use them.
*Eligible PromoStandards Members may serve on committees, participate in workgroups, provide feedback, and ratify a drafted standard.
PromoStandards’ Origins
In 2015, leading industry veteran organizations formed PromoStandards.
These organizations were:
- Essent Corporation,
- Facilisgroup,
- Geiger,
- HALO Branded Solutions,
- Hit Promotional Products Inc.,
- Koozie Group,
- Polyconcept North America (PCNA),
- SanMar,
- Stables Promotional Products,
- And Starline Inc.
The collaboration between these organizations offered a diverse group of distributors, suppliers, and service providers that shared the same vision: to make digital integration and interoperability open and standardized between industry trading partners.
By 2018 PromoStandards was incorporated as a Pennsylvania corporation and registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(6) non-profit business league, allowing us to strategize more effectively to achieve our initial goals and planning for future endeavors.
Leadership
PromoStandards’ founders established our active Board of Directors, which is currently transitioning into a board of advisory members voted in to fill one of the 12 Director seats.
The Board’s primary role is to preside over the Standards Committee’s formation of workgroups tasked with drafting standards that align with the Board of Directors and our organization’s strategic goals.
As of 2023, the following industry professionals hold seats on the Board of Directors:
- Eric Alessi, Chair – President and CEO at Essent Corporation
- Catherine Graham, Vice-Chair – Co-Founder, and CEO at commonsku
- Philip Gergen, Treasurer – Senior Vice President of Technology at Koozie Group
- Jon Norris, Immediate Past Chair – Chief Operating Officer at Starline, Inc.
- Eric Shonebarger, Standards Committee Chair – President at Hit Promotional Products Inc.
- Irwin Goldstein – Vice President of Enterprise and Solutions Architecture at HALO Branded Solutions
- Mike Knapick – Chief Information Officer at SanMar
- Dan Kroymann – Director of Information Technology at Staples Promotional Products
- Amy Rabideau – VP of Product at Facilisgroup
- Steven Stanley – Senior Vice President of Technology at ePromos Promotional Products
- Edward Streiff – Senior Manager of Application Development at Polyconcept North American (PCNA)
- Shawn White – Vice President of Information Technology at Geiger
PromoStandards Is Here to Help!
We simplify communication between suppliers, decorators, distributors, and service providers to streamline product development and management in the custom products industries.
Our standards are free for anyone who wishes to utilize them. However, we recommend viewing our Membership Application to learn more about our three membership levels and the benefits associated with each one.
If you have questions about PromoStandards or want to get involved with our organization, please contact us at https://promostandards.org/membership-application.
