Episode 358: Imprint Engine's Global Playbook for Promo

Two folding chairs. A Google spreadsheet. A closet-sized living room in Uptown Minneapolis.

That's where Caleb Gilbertson and Travis Veit sat back-to-back in 2012 and started building what would become one of the most ambitious distributor stories in promotional products. Thirteen years and $150 million in lifetime revenue later, Imprint Engine operates across four continents with 100+ employees and they're just getting started.

On today's show, recorded live at PPAI Expo at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, we sit down with CEO Caleb Gilbertson and newly appointed Global Chief Revenue Officer Colin Loughran. Their conversation maps the blueprint for distributors who want to think bigger than their zip code—covering everything from why the industry's biggest companies still can't deliver a unified global brand experience, to how AI champions embedded in every department are transforming workflows, to the uncomfortable prediction that supplier-distributor walls are already crumbling.

Caleb won commonsku's Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year award. Colin, a 20-year industry veteran and one of PPAI's Coolest People In Promo, spent a decade in leadership at Gold Star before being recruited from Dublin to lead Imprint Engine's worldwide revenue strategy. He had zero interest in returning to the distributor side until he saw what Imprint Engine was building.

One System, Four Continents

Most global distributors aren't actually global—they're networks of regional partners stitched together. Caleb's observed this even among the industry's top five. Enterprise clients notice the seams.

Imprint Engine's edge is integration: one team, one platform, one consistent experience whether the order ships from Minnesota or Dublin. Their global expansion wasn't driven by ambition, it was driven by clients like Uber who needed them to show up everywhere.

Colin frames the addressable market: $26 billion in North America, $14 billion in Europe. For companies that think connected, the upside is enormous.

Delegate or Die

Caleb credits the EOS delegate-and-elevate framework for every growth phase at Imprint Engine. The exercise is simple: list what you love, what you like, what you tolerate, and what you hate. Then systematically remove the bottom two categories from your plate.

Over a decade, he's shed marketing, operations, and now revenue leadership. Each handoff felt risky. Each one unlocked the next stage of growth. His advice to distributors stuck at a plateau: the thing you're white-knuckling is probably the thing you need to let go of first.

AI With a Calculator, Not a Crystal Ball

Instead of company-wide AI experimentation, Imprint Engine placed a champion in every department with a specific mandate: map workflows, identify automation opportunities, calculate ROI. The question isn't "can AI do this?" it's "what's the three-year return if we invest a million dollars automating this function?"

In this episode, we also discuss:

• Why the supplier-distributor line is dissolving and Caleb's Swag 2035 prediction for what replaces it
• Imprint Engine's acquisition strategy: what they look for in distributor targets
• Building culture across four time zones and why Caleb spent most of 2025 living in Dublin
•  The growth team model that separates new logo acquisition from account expansion and client success
• How commonsku powered Imprint Engine's growth from $3M to $30M+ and became the backbone for team-based selling and weekly KPIs
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Show Notes: Key Timestamps & Topics