commonsku:
15 Years Ahead

Letter From Co-Founders

Dear skummunity,

Where do we even start? With you, obviously. If there's one thing we know for sure after 15 years, it's that this milestone belongs to you as much as it does to us.

The story starts back in 2005, before commonsku was commonsku.

We were running our distributorship, Rightsleeve, and wanted to go on vacation without everything grinding to a halt. So we built ourselves a cloud app (back when the cloud was barely a thing) to run the business from anywhere.

Even then, we cared deeply about two things: the daily work of getting orders out the door, and this industry of distributors and suppliers we loved being part of. In 2011, we wove both of those things right into the name. Common for community. Sku for product.

Back then, there were just 5 of us figuring it out together. In 2012, we put the first version of commonsku in front of a handful of beta testers - customers who had every reason to wait and see, but jumped in anyway. Many of you are still with us, and so many of you have become dear friends. Watching your businesses grow alongside ours has been one of the great joys of our working lives. One of you even started calling this whole thing the skummunity. It stuck, because that's exactly what it is.

Today, more than $1.9B runs through commonsku, and our team is nearly 100 'skuties strong, each one adding texture the two of us never could have on our own. Through all of it, we've tried to scale with intimacy and hang onto the scrappy energy of those early days. And what strikes us most is how little the core has changed: the workflow and the community were the foundation in 2011, and they continue to be the foundation of everything we're building now.

We keep coming back to that word, building, because this industry is in the middle of the most exciting stretch of change we've ever seen. We used to describe promo as a $26B industry. PPAI just widened the lens to branded merchandise, putting the opportunity at $171B+ for distributors and suppliers ready to go after it.

Between our roadmap, what this team is capable of, and everything happening right now, year 15 feels a whole lot like year 1: so much opportunity in front of us and that itch to build. Ten Steps Ahead, Fast Forward. That's the mode we're in.

Which brings us back to you. None of this happens without the skummunity — every distributor who bet on us, every supplier who took the same chance, every piece of honest feedback, every hug and high five at skucamp. Thank you for 15 years of trusting us with your workflow and letting us be part of your growth. Here's to everything that comes next. We wouldn't want to do it with anyone else!

With gratitude and a whole lot of excitement,

Catherine & Mark