Jonathan Isaacson is the Chairman and CEO of The Gem Group, Inc, whom you know and love as Gemline, Jeremy Lott is the President and CEO of another one of our industry’s loved suppliers, SanMar, today we are honored to have them both on the skucast to help us close out the year but more importantly, help us look forward to 2022.
Gemline has been recognized as one of the 12 largest companies in the industry. It has its primary operation in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where they are one of the largest employers, with a technical facility in Shenzhen, China.
This year, ASI recognized Jonathan with one of our industry’s highest honors, Person of the year, not just for their record growth -which is astonishing enough- but for being a voice and influence for good, he was “at the heart of deeply impactful public health initiatives, from guiding local taskforces to getting vaccines to people in the community. He also took a key role in promoting industry education aimed at combating COVID-19.” (ASIcentral.com).
Jeremy Lott is the President and CEO of SanMar, and in addition to being the largest supplier in the industry with over 2.4 billion in revenue, Jeremy and Sanmar were recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a 2021 best-managed company. The Best Managed Companies program is a high mark of excellence for private companies. U.S. designees must have revenues of at least $250 million and go through a rigorous qualification process.
But Jeremy and Jonathan both lead organizations, that despite the challenges of this year, have achieved record growth and more importantly they both lead our industry in social responsibility and sustainability efforts.
Today, we talk about multiple topics including:
what factors led to their growth
the permanent changes our industry can expect from these past few years of disruption
supply chain and where it stands now,
what we can expect in 2022
how inflation can impact our industry
their respective CSR efforts
And finally, I do something I haven’t done before, at the end of our chat, I ask each of them to interview the other and ask them anything. We love these two guys, I love how they lead their companies and how conscientious and intentional they are about life and business, like us, you’ll love this conversation.