GABE GOTAY
Welcome to the Promote Perspectives podcast presented by SAGE, dedicated to providing promotional products suppliers and distributors tips, tricks, and insights to help them grow their business and learn more about the industry. I’m Gabe Gotay, senior marketing coordinator here at SAGE, and I’m joined today by Andy Evans, a man with the self-proclaimed longest job title here at SAGE, and we’re going to be talking about our history. Andy, welcome to the show.
ANDY EVANS
Thank you, thank you for having me. This is going to be awesome.
GABE GOTAY
Yeah, I thought I would let you know, by the way, I did a little research, and you, I think, are tied for third longest job title. I think our longest job title here is senior information services project specialist, so you have a little ways to go.
ANDY EVANS
Yeah, I’m going to have to get promoted to get a longer one than that.
GABE GOTAY
Yeah, why don’t you go ahead and tell the audience what your role is here at SAGE?
ANDY EVANS
So, I am the senior corporate account manager at SAGE, and I’ve been at SAGE for 15 years now, started in 2010. So, I kind of handle our larger accounts on the distributor side.
GABE GOTAY
Wow, so you’ve known SAGE longer than you’ve known some of your kids.
ANDY EVANS
That is correct. This is like my family. I’ve known so many people and had so many relationships. This is truly like my family.
GABE GOTAY
Wow, tell us a little bit about why you’re so excited to talk about the history of SAGE.
ANDY EVANS
You know, it’s funny, like I say this to my clients all the time, like I have the easiest job in America, because when I went to college, I’m not going to tell you when, but there was this thing called Y2K. So, the number one job at the time was information systems, about computers. Well, let’s just say Y2K didn’t happen. Nothing really came from that, right? So, computer jobs were not very available at the time when I graduated. So, what did I do? I became a teacher, and I actually taught history. So, when I got hired on at SAGE, I then finally got to teach people about software, you know, computers. So, both of my backgrounds came together, and it’s really made this so easy for me. And I just love talking about history because it shows you, you know, where we started and how much growth and where we are now. And if you don’t know like how something’s made, it’s just not as fun, you know, just to use it, just say, “Oh, I can use this.” But if you know how it’s made, it just makes it so much more great, you know.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and anybody who knows you already, which I’m sure is honestly a ton of the audience, and anybody who’s just meeting you for the first time on this episode, they’re going to tell right away why you were such a good teacher. Your storytelling capabilities there are excellent.
ANDY EVANS
Well, thank you.
GABE GOTAY
And, you know, the genesis of this episode was that Andy presented the history of SAGE in an internal meeting, and for, you know, I’m relatively new, I’ve been with the company about two and a half years, it was really cool to get to learn about the whole history because the world was so different back when this all started. So, we’re super excited to share this with you guys today. Kick us off. You already kind of mentioned, you know, your technology and background was useful here, but what about your background with the promotional products industry in general when you came to SAGE?
ANDY EVANS
I’ll put it to you this way, my friends still think I sell koozies for a living. They don’t understand. Like I did not know this industry existed. I did not know anything about it. And truly, from our standpoint, from distributor side, that is the hardest part. It’s not learning the services and everything that we have to offer our customers. It’s the industry. I mean, you talk about variable charges and everything else due to imprint and all the different things that you need to learn. That’s really the difficult part. And when I first started, the software and all the computers and everything, that was the easy part. It was the industry that really had to learn. And that was great, you know, once we got a hold of that and you learn the industry, our services make it so much easier to use.
GABE GOTAY
Well, let’s actually talk about SAGE now. So, take us back to the beginning. How did SAGE get started?
ANDY EVANS
So, a lot of people don’t know this. Like in 1992, SAGE came out with a product called Quick Credit. And I just want to read this because I want to make sure I say it exactly right. So, Quick Credit was a credit service that suppliers could dial into and get credit reporting on distributors. There was only one other competitor in the market at the time, right? But SAGE was kind of a more affordable option, but it really didn’t take off. But that’s how it started was actually just doing a quick credit in 1992. That was the first product they sold.
GABE GOTAY
Besides just that other company that was doing quick credit, did that cause, did offering quick credit offer confusion with any other companies?
ANDY EVANS
Yes, probably, because most people don’t know this. There’s another company called Sage. It is an accounting firm that is Sage, right? So, we get calls and we get calls all the time, like, “So, I’m looking at your accounting programs and softwares.” And we’re like, “Hold on, hold on, are you wanting to talk to SAGE, the promotional product company, or are you wanting to talk to Sage, the accounting firm?” But we always make a joke, we are the one and true only SAGE, right? But there is another Sage out there, so we do still from time to time get calls about that. But most importantly, you know, we’re the really only SAGE out there.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and nobody should feel bad for getting confused on that. Even the technology behind the internet is confused. Like I’m a pretty heavy AI user, and if I’m ever doing anything related to work with AI, I always have to specify not that other Sage.
ANDY EVANS
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
GABE GOTAY
So, how did we kind of pivot from quick credit? What were the next steps?
ANDY EVANS
Well, you got to think about it. Like we in ‘93 came out with SAGE Online. So, it’s kind of hard to explain, but this industry, my first trade show, I literally was watching people walk with suitcases because it was all catalog based, you know, before there were computers, before there was internet, before there was anything, it was all catalogs. That’s how you got items, door-to-door salespeople showing catalogs, showing examples. And so, once we pivoted to an online version, that’s where, you know, it took off. Like that was really the true product to where now all these distributors could get access to be able to see things online. But then again, it’s computers, right? And you’re used to the catalog world. I mean, we used to sell a data book, and a data book was like a phone book. Some people don’t even know what a phone book was. When I did this presentation, some people were like, “I think I remember a phone book. I think my dad sat me on a phone book once in a car seat or something.” But like, we would do data books, and we would send out CDs, and we would send out all the different things you could download computer, right? To get data. But think about this, does gas prices change when you go to the gas pump every day? So, if we go send you something in the mail to get access, right, on a CD or a floppy disc, how accurate is that data going to be six months from now? You don’t know, right? So, that’s really where we were still doing that compared to the catalogs and everything else, but it all improved from there.
GABE GOTAY
So, when did we move, because you talk about kind of the evolution of technology there and the development of the, you know, the internet, which to make you feel even older, when SAGE started, I was negative-2 years old.
ANDY EVANS
There you go, there you go.
GABE GOTAY
But how did websites and when did websites become a trend for us?
ANDY EVANS
You know, for us, I mean, at the end of the 90s, early 2000s, kind of is when websites came into play. I mean, the internet was still in its infancy stage. I mean, dial-up, right? You go ask 10 distributors in, say, 1999, raise your hand if you have a website. One out of 10 maybe raise their hand, right? Because it’s the internet. It’s new. It’s brand new. Suppliers have websites. We don’t need websites.
Now, go ask a distributor, you know, 10 today, how many of you have a website to promote your business? All 10 will probably raise their hand, right? They want to be able to do it. So, not only are we trying to take this generation of catalogs and fax machines and all that type of stuff and get into, say, look, the internet is changing the world. You need to be able to sell your own services. The first website we sold was kind of like a business card. It had their information on there, and then you could put links to go to other supplier websites. You know, but then we started adding our own categories to where distributors then could go offer products. So, that’s really when it took off, and that’s really when it revolutionized like how much and how a distributor could expand their business and get new clients that weren’t just in their Rolodex. Because now, the internet, as we all know, is worldwide.
GABE GOTAY
And a Rolodex is…? I’m just kidding.
ANDY EVANS
Exactly. I understand.
GABE GOTAY
If you had to pinpoint a moment when SAGE really took off, what would that be?
ANDY EVANS
Very easy, 2011. That would be when SAGE and PPAI joined forces. It was called the Power of Two, and it was huge. And I’ll never forget the meeting we had about it, because you got to understand, PPAI, the governing body of this industry, chose SAGE to be the exclusive technology partner for them, which was huge. Because when you look at the pyramid of this industry as a whole, right, you have the nonprofit PPAI, and then you have your technology partners below, and SAGE was chosen. There were a lot of distributors out there that were PPAI members that were not SAGE members. There were a lot of SAGE members that may not necessarily be PPAI members. Well, when that happened, everybody got both memberships, and we kind of helped each other out in the aspect of what we didn’t do, PPAI did, and what PPAI didn’t do, we did. So, it was like the perfect, you know, connection.
I will tell you that expo, the first year that news was released, is the craziest expo I have ever been to in my whole life. Because you have so many new people saying, “I’m a PPAI member. I hear I get SAGE. Tell me about it.” Right? And then there’s SAGE people saying, “Hey, I get PPAI benefits. Tell me about it.” So, it was awesome. Like, that was the turning point, and ever since then, it’s just been nothing but the sky’s the limit.
GABE GOTAY
Well, it’s clearly been successful because that evolved into, you know, now we have that same alliance with the Canadian side of the industry with PPPC.
ANDY EVANS
Exactly. Exactly. That’s exploded, right? Like once that jumped on board, then the Canadian side, PPPC, joined. So, that’s just been such a great thing with them, too, because so many distributors, again, may be part of PPPC and not know about SAGE, or they may have SAGE and were not a member of PPPC. So, it all merges together, and it just, it just makes our life so much easier, honestly, in our department, I can tell you.
GABE GOTAY
So, when that happened, you know, and we had this big explosion of all these new members because of that alliance, how did the SAGE team go about training all those new members on how to use our tools and products and services?
ANDY EVANS
Like, what are we doing now, you know? Like, think about it. What are we doing right now? We are having a meeting, right, with videos and everything. There were no Zooms. I mean, there was GoToMeeting back then, but it was still travel time. Like, we had, and there’s going to be distributors like, “bring it back!” as soon as I say this, we had seminar series. Seminar series where we would fly to, like, over 50 different cities in a year, and we would set up in a little hotel room and set a projector and do a training in front of all of those distributors. We would then go drive to the next city, set up again, and have distributors there. But it was difficult for distributors, too. Think about it. Like, Houston, Atlanta, these are huge cities, right? So, if we go into, say, a suburb of northern Atlanta, do you know how those distributors had to drive in traffic that were on the south side to get all the way to where we were located? So, even then, it was difficult to be able to touch and educate all these different distributors that were just spread out. Trade shows. I mean, trade shows were the only way to get leads back then, right? You had all these people showing up, and I just remember thinking about it.
Now, look at it. We have all these apps, everything, phones. We had scanners, you know, like plugged-in scanners. I mean, they looked like Star Trek lasers that, you know, had to find people with the badge code and everything else so that you could actually get their information and then get a printout after the fact. So, that’s the way we got out all of our teachings and everything else was literally flying city to city to city. Because back then, that’s like me trying to train you right now on your computer over the phone, you know, click that button. No, no, no, where are you? No, above that. No, you know, above that. Okay, tell me what’s on your screen. You know, like, that was so difficult at the time. But obviously, technology has grown to make our life so much easier with our software.
GABE GOTAY
Sounds like trying to help my grandma set up her Facebook over the phone.
ANDY EVANS
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
GABE GOTAY
I totally understand flying all around the city, but it wasn’t just flying either, right? Like you said, you guys were hitting the road together.
ANDY EVANS
Oh, yes. Like, certain times, like, this was a bonding experience. Think about three people in a minivan packed with boxes of marketing material and everything and driving, I don’t know, 300 miles in a day, and then the next day driving another 300 miles. You know, think about this. Some of them actually flew from city to city because the distances were so far they couldn’t drive. But putting your life in the hands of someone you don’t really know, driving in traffic in a random city in a minivan, bonding would be an understatement to just tell you how some of those trips went, for sure.
GABE GOTAY
Well, but you know, something I’ve definitely noticed is just how close, especially the veterans here at SAGE, are. Like, you guys have so much history together.
ANDY EVANS
When you work with someone, I’m about to turn 45. I’ve literally worked at SAGE over a third of my life, right? And so, this is my family. Like, you’re with these people all the time. My wife makes a joke, you know, you spend more time with your work friends than you spend with me. It’s kind of true sometimes when you go on these traveling trips. So, that is honestly the best part about this is that you can see, you just said I had the third longest title or whatever else, but you know, just looking at this company, there’s people that have worked since the inception of this company still, which is just so great.
GABE GOTAY
This is maybe a harder question, but what would you say has been the biggest shift in the industry since you’ve been at SAGE?
ANDY EVANS
That is a good question. Let me. So, all we’ve talked about is technology, right? We’ve talked about the internet, you know, Zoom calls like we’re having now, websites, everything. And I made a comment, I don’t know, probably five or six years ago, and I was like, “Printing is dead.” You know, I was like, “Everybody has a phone. You go walk in the airport, everybody’s got a phone.” You know, like you just said, grandma, Facebook, everybody’s got something. And the shift in that, because I’ve noticed that there’s not as many catalogs being available anymore, even from a supplier standpoint, right? And the printing aspect of it has just dramatically come back to be a marketing feature. That’s, I mean, we have our catalog studio, but why? Because, think about it, I made the comment, if you were to ask 10 distributors, how many of you have a website, raise your hand, they would all raise their hand. So, you have a one in 10 chance automatically of your website showing up when a customer is searching for promotional products. But if they had a catalog with your name on it, I did a case study on this, then that’s something tangible they can see and use. So, like, printing has come back to where a lot of people do printing.
The second major shift, stores. Like everybody does stores. Do you order stuff online? Oh yeah. Do you like ordering stuff online too much? Exactly. I mean, there’s a joke, like, if I was an Amazon driver, I would never have to leave home because of all the packages already showing up at my house, right? So, everybody wants a store. And that’s just proof in the pudding with us. Like, stores have become so apparent to where that’s also kind of the key where they want to focus, rather than just their whole website. Hey, let me get you to this reorder portal, right? With stores, that’s been the biggest shift. I didn’t think printing was going to come back like this, but I’ve learned that’s how people now differentiate themselves, marketing themselves. And then the store aspect, I knew it would grow, but not at the rate that it’s growing, right? That’s, that’s kind of the crazy thing.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and I’m sure that’s responsible for a lot of the growth in the industry overall, right? Just like, you know, compared to the old days of having to haul around boxes of catalogs just to show your products just to get somebody to contact you to buy something.
ANDY EVANS
Exactly.
GABE GOTAY
Everybody’s so used to that model. And the printing side of things is interesting, too, because it’s kind of like the logos of the industry overall, which is what’s the value of a promotional product, right? It’s something that’s in your hand that is branding and marketing, right?
ANDY EVANS
Think about a trade show. Does every supplier have something they can grab? Usually. Think about it. We have stuff you can grab in our booth. Every supplier in a trade show has some type of documentation or whatever that they can hand out because it’s tangible, right? And it’s something that they know, hey, you may go to my website, but when you get home, you’re going to have this piece of paper sitting here that says you stopped. This is what we offer and everything else. It’s just another marketing piece that’s, again, I was wrong. I was 100% wrong. Wrong. I know my wife will hold this over my head if she ever watches this video, but I was wrong, and that’s what’s really come back as printing.
GABE GOTAY
That’s going to be the clip we use to market this episode. We’re not going to give any other context, just “I was wrong. I was so wrong.” No, and it, like you said, it’s going to stick around at home, and probably for, like, I’m not even, when I go to those shows, obviously, I’m with SAGE, so I’m not there to even buy promotional products, but I still go home with tons of these things, and they sit on my desk. It’s kind of like the same thing when you get like birthday or Christmas cards where it’s like you almost feel guilty throwing them away for the longest time.
ANDY EVANS
100% correct.
GABE GOTAY
All right, well, to take us on home, Andy, what’s been your favorite thing working for SAGE for the last 15 years?
ANDY EVANS
I think literally growing with the company and watching the birth of the internet and how it took off. Like, when I did this, I wish we could do screenshots like what a website used to look like, like what our search engine used to look like, you know, and then the growth of all the things that we’ve added since and all the modules and everything else. Because literally, technology-wise, if you think about it, what a cell phone was in 2010 compared to what it can do now in 2025, what websites look like, what e-commerce looks like, I mean, think about everything from how people had to place orders, how things had to be processed back then to now. I mean, literally, from your phone, you can do anything you want, right? So, being able to watch this grow, you know, like I said, one of my favorite things about history is knowing where you started and where you end up. Truly being a part of this for 15 years, knowing where we started and where we are now and how much we’ve grown has is honestly the best part. And it made my job easier because someone coming on now today, they get thrown all the stuff we offer. I literally spent a year learning every new thing we came out with, you know, as we grew over the last 15 years. So, I feel like I have more respect for everything and remember when we came out with stuff because I’m like, “Oh, I remember when this came out. This was so awesome, and then the improvements on it and just watching it grow. It’s like anything, you have a child. I’m going to give a shout out. My son’s turning 10 today, right? Like, it’s fun to watch them grow. So, anything that you can do and watch grow, that’s been the best part by far of the last 15 years.
GABE GOTAY
Well, and I’m sure your son’s really going to appreciate the shout out. I know that that’s a huge demographic for us here on the Promo Podcast.
ANDY EVANS
There you go. There you go.
GABE GOTAY
Well, Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Before we wrap it up, do you have any other final thoughts or words you want to share with the audience?
ANDY EVANS
Uh, sign up for SAGE Conference if you haven’t registered today, please.
GABE GOTAY
Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for joining us. If you’re not subscribed already, please go ahead and do so and head to the SAGE blog to figure out when the next live episode is so you can join us on Zoom and interact directly. Thanks again, Andy, and everybody have a good day.
ANDY EVANS
Thank you.