A Little History
The Beginning
About thirty years ago, Bruce Sherman got the idea to create Sherman Creative Promotions when he was on the National Board of Directors for the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. In one of their annual meetings in Washington, DC, he met a gentleman from California who talked to him about the Promotional Products Industry and it seemed to be an interesting prospect. Bruce worked alone on this endeavor for a while and the business had considerable growth. Not seeing much local competition serving the promotional needs of our area businesses and organizations, he thought it would be a great opportunity for Carol to join him and create Sherman Creative Promotions. “With our combined business, accounting, education, and sales experience, we believe we were a natural partnership to develop a successful business. We both had extensive organizational training from the time of our youth through our young adult years and our commitment to serve our community began when we were teenagers in the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization” says Bruce.
We grew up in the Youngstown area and have always considered Youngstown a great place to live and raise our family. In Judaism there is a teaching called “Tikkun Olam” which translates to “to repair the world” or “to make the world a better place”. We have tried to practice this teaching by supporting area organizations with both our financial contributions and service on boards and at volunteer events.
When we started Sherman Creative Promotions, one of our first customers was The Southern Park Mall. Our relationship with the mall marketing manager helped us grow to serve many additional Debartolo (now Simon) malls. As marketing managers were transferred among the various locations, our business with the malls increased proportionately.
Shortly after we opened our business, we received a call from an IBM sales representative from New Castle, PA who found our name in the yellow pages. Yes, in 1996, people used the yellow pages to find businesses to meet their needs. The call came through on a Friday and the sales representative needed a promotional product to give to her guests on Monday when she was taking them to a football game. We contacted one of our suppliers and they produced imprinted stadium cups the same day and had them delivered to our customer before noon on Monday. Our customer was very pleased and thankful. That special service grew into a long-time relationship with this sales rep and a multitude of other IBM reps as she retold our story at their regional and district meetings. We grew to produce everything from orders of cubicle clips in quantities of 10,000 to embroidered high-end clothing. This experience supported our belief that no order is ever too small and no customer is insignificant.
We chose promotional products as a business because it is fun and it is a creative way to meet people and develop relationships. When we traveled to conventions and vender showcases it was always amazing to see the NEW items on the market and it was interesting to see how production methods changed over the years. Technology has been the biggest change in the industry since we started. In the beginning, we bought black and white clip art books and made paste-up layouts for our customers. Since everything was screen printed, we had to color separate each multi-color imprint. Also, all orders had to be mailed to our vendors and each order cost us $10 FedEx shipping charges. By the late 2000’s we began designing art electronically without separating colors and the imprint method in most cases changed from screen printing to digital printing making full color designs very reasonable to produce. Also, we began to submit all orders online eliminating the postage charges. With all the industry changes we were able to work more efficiently and faster at less cost to both our customers and our bottom line.
Growing Relationships
A special area of growth for us over the years is campaign promotions for both politicians and organizations promoting levies. Whether it was giveaways like emery boards, magnets, pencils, and pens, large yard signs, or imprinted tee shirts, we helped everyone meet their needs and keep within their budget.
Our relationship with Youngstown State University began in our early business years with supplying individual colleges and departments within the university with promotional products such as giveaways, crystal awards and perpetual plaques. By word of mouth (the best kind of advertising anyone could have) our business with YSU grew from year to year. By 2018 we solidified our highly valued relationship with YSU when they selected us as a preferred provider to service the entire university.
Favorite Products and Memories
One of our favorite promotional products is the tee shirt. Tee shirts give a large promotional area on the front and back. If needed, customers could sell ads to be placed on the back to help underwrite the cost of the shirts. Tee shirts have no age or gender discrimination. We could sell them to day camps, teen youth groups, churches, politicians, organizations and businesses promoting special events. There is virtually no one who would not wear a tee shirt.
The second most favorite product of ours is the ink pen because it is so versatile. Pens are given away in doctor’s offices, banks, at sales calls, at trade shows and in political campaigns. Pens are light weight and can be carried from place to place in large quantities without a problem. Pens are consumable which leads to great reorders. During the last few years, stylus pens came into the market and they became very popular also because so many people were using them on their computers and iPads.
As entrepreneurs we have always been able to set our own destiny. Our favorite memory of Sherman Creative Promotions is the lifeline of our business. We started the business from scratch and with hard work and ethical practice we made it into a profitable business with a strong emphasis on “community”. Now, as we pass it along to a younger generation with new ideas and new skills, we are confident that Sherman Creative will continue to thrive. Stephanie Shapiro and Brittany Mendez are hard workers like us and they believe in the same principles as we do. They have strong ethical practices and they believe in our “community”. They are known by their motto, “Keep it Local”.
In our opinion, success is having fulfilling careers and being able to provide for our family while still having time to actively support our community. While financial worth is important, it must be balanced with the establishment of a good name.
Our advice to future entrepreneurs is to never compromise your principles. Work hard, be organized, be honest, be fair, always be considerate of others and you will be successful.
