GABE GOTAY
Welcome to Promo Perspectives, a podcast presented by SAGE dedicated to giving promotional products suppliers and distributors tips, tricks, and insights to help them grow their businesses. I’m Gabe Gotay, senior marketing coordinator here at SAGE, and today we’re wrapping up our series on sustainability by presenting an interview with Lane Hokanson with Goldstar, a supplier in the industry dedicated to creating a better future. To kick it off, I’ll let Lane tell you a little bit more about her role at Goldstar.
LANE HOKANSON
Hi, I’m Lane Hokanson, global marketing manager at Goldstar. I am in Michigan, native to Michigan, and I’m actually based in Grand Rapids, which can be a little exciting from a time zone perspective. I’ve got co-workers in San Diego, I’ve got people in Europe, so I really get to play the middle of the time zone game. I started in promo in 2018 on the distributor side, and it turns out that promo is a little bit like a cult, once you get in, kind of hard to get out. So, I was recruited to Goldstar by former team member Parker Melvin, and I’ve been here since 2021. I started as a key account marketing coordinator, I believe, because I’m pretty sure I had the longest title in the company at the time, and I somehow convinced them to let me be the global marketing manager.
GABE GOTAY
I asked Lane to describe Goldstar’s core mission and values and how those values translate into the company’s approach to business. Here’s what she had to say.
LANE HOKANSON
So, we have what we like to call the four Ps at Goldstar, which is a new kind of framing for us, and the Ps are a little bit—the acronym is a little shaky—but it’s planet, product, pricing, and imprint. So, we are really focused on, obviously, the planet. Sustainability is a huge component of our business. We’ve really dedicated a lot of time and energy to that here in the last several years. We obviously are committed to product in terms of offering objects that have real value to our customers, to our partners. Pricing, as you know, we are really focused on simplicity and that all-inclusive pricing offer. And then, in print, we strive to be known as leadership in decoration. But it really is all about that simplicity for us. It sounds simple, but it really takes kind of a lot of work behind the scenes to make that offer to all of our customers, and so we are working hard always to make everything as easy as possible for those we do business with and to really implement that across everything we do.
GABE GOTAY
As we’ve learned over these last couple of episodes, sustainability is a very broad topic, and honestly, when I started my research, I would have considered it to be just eco-friendliness, but I now know just how much more it encompasses. I asked Lane what it means to Goldstar to be sustainable and how has that changed.
LANE HOKANSON
I think that sustainability is a complicated concept in general, and it’s absolutely a complicated relationship when it comes to promotional products because a lot of people consider promotional products as inherently transitory. I think that there’s been a reframing of that in the industry in the last several years. You’ve even heard it go from promotional products to branded merchandise, and I like to think that Goldstar played a part in that, but we’re definitely not alone. It’s something that I’ve seen a big stride and commitment towards of offering products that are not something you stick in a junk drawer, not something you take from an event and throw away afterwards, but items that you want to keep because they are well-made, they commit to a message, they look nice, they feel nice, and I think that is the biggest component of sustainability. We sometimes forget that of the reduce, reuse, recycle, recycle is the last R. Reduction and reusing are more important. So, if we can pick a drinkware piece that you’re going to actually keep and reuse, that’s going to be a more sustainable commitment. And if it’s something that’s got a logo on there and it looks nice and they keep it and it also promotes your branding, even better. I think that it’s changed in the sense that sustainability very much used to be just a buzzword. I think everyone was guilty of greenwashing. It used to be something that you could just kind of throw around and say. There’s really been a dedication now to proving it and really putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to those claims. I know that Goldstar has really committed to getting our certifications, providing that transparency, and making sure that it’s not just a term we’re throwing around lightly. We are showing it to customers. We are providing it in ways where the end user can also access that information, so that it’s a value offer that goes from start to end, and that it’s also something that we are implementing in our own practices. So, obviously, we’re considering sustainability not just in our products and using recycled stainless steel, but also in our packaging, in our production, in all of those core ways, so that we are reducing our carbon footprint and really making that commitment to our planet.
GABE GOTAY
Part of Goldstar’s commitment to creating a better future is the appropriately named Made Better initiative. I asked Lane to tell the audience a little bit more about this initiative.
LANE HOKANSON
So, the Made Better initiative, I believe, is something that started, I want to say, two years ago. Don’t quote me on that if I’m wrong, but it is something that really embodies our dedication to sustainability, and honestly, it was originally named Made Better because we didn’t have all of the needed requirements and certifications to say the sword of sustainability, so we were working around it because we knew that we wanted to get there, but we wanted to start offering products within that realm. And it’s honestly our commitment to having a range of products that features at least one component of Made Better or sustainable material. So, as much as possible, we have replaced all of our bestsellers with a component of Made Better material. So, for example, we’re known for the Bowie pen, and now we have it—it looks exactly the same, but the barrel is made with recycled stainless steel and aluminum. So, looks the same, makes you feel a little bit better, and that is really the initiative, is to replace all of our bestsellers and implement only new products that have that feel-good material at the same price, so that you can make smarter choices for your brand without a bigger price tag.
GABE GOTAY
Earlier, Lane mentioned the prevalence of greenwashing in the industry. For those unfamiliar with the term, greenwashing is when businesses make claims around sustainability that they can’t back up. Goldstar has worked hard to walk the walk. I asked Lane to talk about some of the certifications that they’ve earned to prove their sustainable practices. Here’s what she had to say.
LANE HOKANSON
So, we just acquired our certifications, FSC, GRS, and we just acquired those in 2024. We’re very proud. They take a lot more work than you might expect, which is good. You want to make sure that companies are actually dedicating the support and resources that are needed, but they are essentially guard rails to make sure that you are doing your business in the way that you need to to meet those standards. They make sure that you are actually following those practices, doing sustainable business, and so it’s really just to provide transparency to your customer. So, FSC stands for Forestry Stewardship Council. GRS stands for Global Recycled Standard, and RCS stands for Recycled Claim Standard. All of those are a lot of letters, which basically just mean you are living up to what you are offering. So, they prove that you are sourcing materials from renewable resources, that you are actually recycling the things that you are claiming to, and it really provides that transparency, so that you as an end user or a customer can know that your supplier is doing what they say they’re going to.
GABE GOTAY
Next, I asked Lane how Goldstar supports their distributed partners in their own sustainability initiatives and if they provided any resources or tools to help them make eco-conscious choices.
LANE HOKANSON
We do. We absolutely support our distributor partnerships. They’re obviously the core of our business, and so right now, we are in a position to do that through information and through digital tools. We are working to make our carbon emission transparency documentation as available as possible. You will see it on some of our products, not all of them quite yet, but for example, if you went to simplygoldstar.com and looked up the easiest SKU to remember, mug, for our ceramic mug, it has a little spot at the bottom of the product listing where you can click on the carbon footprint information. So, things like that, where it is readily available, you don’t have to ask anyone for that information, you can just access it yourself, means that you as a distributor are able to document your own initiatives, use those claims for your own customers. So, right now, we’re in that kind of support phase. We do hope to commit more fully at a different timeline, but right now, we’re building our own initiative, so we’re kind of in that middle area.
GABE GOTAY
Sustainability is all about looking to the future, so I asked Lane what goals Goldstar has moving forward and if she had any final thoughts that she wanted to leave us with.
LANE HOKANSON
So, we have a lot of goals, always. Heather Smart is a looking forward kind of gal, and she has pushed us so far forward already. We are so grateful for her leadership. So, short-term goals, in 2025, we are working to reduce our carbon emissions by a minimum of 29% from where we were in 2019. And then, we currently have 57% of our products that are either recyclable, reusable, or compostable, but I know that we have numbers in the bank that we’re looking to get to this year, and then in the next several years, there are really big goals for us to go to carbon neutrality, to have 100% FSC certified products, to have 100% of a recycled or Made Better range. We are really looking to have everything that you select from Goldstar have a planet-friendly component, so that you can always have something that thinks of the planet and you don’t have to think about it yourself. You have products that are making that choice for you and you can feel good about it. We are so excited about our rebrand. If you haven’t seen it, it’s something that we worked really hard on. It was all internal. That was something that was launched at the start of 2025. We’re making big strides towards matching up our look with our efforts in sustainability. So, if you haven’t seen it, make sure you check it out. And we’re also really committed towards taking strides in leadership towards bags and drinkware. Those spaces are really important to us, so really making sure you, we’re not known just for pens, but for bags and drinkware and stationery as well. And I just wanted to say that we really believe in our people. I know we’ve had some hurdles in the past with service, but we are incredibly proud of the determination and commitment to excellence that we’ve seen here internally. I know that I’ve said it before in other interviews, but when I started at Goldstar, I was convinced that everybody was doing a bit. Everyone was really nice, and I was a little bit suspicious about it, but it’s truly a special place to work, and I know that our distributor partners see the difference as well. We know that we wouldn’t be here without them, so we just wanted to make sure to say thank you.
GABE GOTAY
And I want to thank Lane for agreeing to come on the podcast. Also, thank Kara Keister with Social Good Promotions for being a guest on the other bonus episode. And finally, Elizabeth Wimbush and her whole team from PPAI for putting together such amazing resources to help businesses in our industry thrive while creating a more sustainable future for everyone. I hope these episodes have inspired you to take steps toward sustainability in your own business. And thank you so much for listening. Please go subscribe and head to the SAGE blog to find out when the next live episode of Promo Perspectives is so you can join us on the Zoom and participate and chat with everybody else. Thanks so much, and we’ll see you there.