In his freshman year of college, Isaac Hetzroni founded Imprint Genius (asi/230604), a distributorship based in Gainesville, FL, by selling cell phone fans at parties. Today, he is a CEO and recent college graduate from the University of Florida. In this episode of Promo Insiders, Eloisa Gutierrez of ASI, talks with Hetzroni about how he got Imprint Genius on its feet and, more recently, through a global pandemic.

Isaac Hetzroni headshot.jpg Caption: Isaac Hetzroni, CEO of Imprint Genius

Working remotely as a CEO and student this past spring, Hetzroni and his team – mostly college students and alumni – decided to invest in areas outside of PPE. “We’re recommending the idea that you need to go and keep your company culture alive,” he says. To do this, Hetzroni shared that Imprint Genius diversified its digital services and attempted to find and tap into new markets in the now-virtual corporate world.

Also included in this episode, Hetzroni announces the company’s new initiative: Promo Done Greener, a resource for businesses in the industry to calculate and offset some of their carbon footprint. By calculating the rough carbon footprint of T-shirts commonly used in the industry, the program offers a solution for companies to actively counter their environmental impact.

Hetzroni describes it as a way “to start the conversation” between suppliers, distributors and their clients about sustainability in the industry. It complements Imprint Genius’ one-of-a-kind outlook on the issue: to determine a product’s sustainability by its throwaway rate, rather than the materials it’s made from. Imprint Genius recommends that companies provide their customers with more choices, so that they’ll keep their promotional products longer. With a slower throwaway rate, a product’s return on investment – and sustainability – increases. “Maybe it’s better to give [end-users] a high-quality tote bag that’s not made of recycled material but that they’re actually going to keep,” Hetzroni says. “At the end of the day, it’s more helpful.”

Finally, Hetzroni touches upon how to include young people in the promotional products industry. “If you want to get good talent and you want to, ideally, change the way people look at promo,” he says, “you’ve got to take risks and give people creative freedom.”

Podcast Chapters
2:34: Adjusting as a CEO and student during the pandemic
6:36: Products with potential in the next few months
8:50: A unique perspective on sustainability
10:42: Announcing Promo Done Greener
13:45: Integrating young people into the industry