Join us for a special episode of the Promo Perspectives podcast featuring an insightful conversation between David Natinsky, President of SAGE, and Jonathan Strauss, President & CEO of PPPC (Promotional Products Professionals of Canada). Discover the fascinating history and evolution of the partnership between SAGE and PPPC, and how this powerful collaboration benefits the Canadian promotional products industry and its companies. David and Jonathan share the passion behind this effective alliance, detailing how it streamlines access to essential technology and resources for PPPC members.
Learn about:
The origins of the SAGE and PPPC relationship.
How PPAI played a pivotal role in connecting the organizations.
The seamless integration of SAGE tools and PPPC membership for Canadian distributors and suppliers.
The strategic alignment of the partnership with PPPC’s mission to grow and improve the Canadian industry.
The ongoing development of Canadian-specific features within the SAGE platform.
The importance of distributor and supplier feedback in shaping SAGE’s offerings.
The value of SAGE’s presence and support at PPPC events across Canada.
The future of this dynamic partnership and its continued impact on the promotional products landscape in Canada.
Don’t miss this engaging discussion that highlights the strength of industry collaboration and the dedication to empowering promotional product professionals in Canada!
👍 Like this video and subscribe to the Promo Perspectives podcast for more fresh insights into the promotional products industry. We have many more great episodes coming soon! #PromoPerspectives #SAGE #PPPC #PromotionalProducts #Canada #IndustryPartnership #Technology #BusinessGrowth #Podcast #Marketing #CanadianBusiness
GABE GOTAY
Hi, I’m Gabe Gotay, senior marketing coordinator at SAGE, and I’m so excited to present to you this very special episode of the Promo Perspectives podcast, the podcast presented by SAGE dedicated to giving promotional products suppliers and distributors fresh insights into the industry. In this episode, I’m very excited to share a conversation between David Natinsky, president of SAGE, and Jonathan Strauss, president and CEO of PPPC, and talk about the partnership between our two companies and what that means for the industry and Canadian promo companies. I really enjoyed listening to this conversation, hearing the passion that they had for the industry and what an effective collaboration it’s been, and I hope you get some really great takeaways from it. Without further ado, David and Jonathan.
DAVID NATINSKY
So, the relationship between PPAI and SAGE started years before the relationship with PPPC, and it culminated by the need to include our northern friends in Canada, the Promotional Products Professionals of Canada. We spent years with PPAI, I would say, tweaking the system and tweaking how a partnership between a technology company and an association would work. So when we moved and we met with PPPC and included them in, at the time we called it, you know, the power of three because it was two associations and then SAGE, it seemed like the right move at the right time. The association was strong and powerful, but we saw what happened with the relationship with PPAI and how we grew PPAI’s membership. We felt very comfortable that we could do the same thing in Canada. Obviously, I met with Jonathan, had many talks, spent many years without – pre-Jonathan – without a relationship, and then ended up working out a similar plan where it made it very simple for members of PPPC to have access to SAGE products, tools, and services. And just like with PPAI, looking at the numbers and the metrics, it was a win-win for both groups. And years later, I think that was in 2018 maybe that relationship happened, years later it continues to grow year-over-year.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
When I was introduced to the industry, we were looking for a new technology solution, and our association had decades of history as best friends with PPAI, but not a formal partnership or relationship the way we do now. And so, in our first meeting with PPAI, and we talked about our challenges of needing new technology for the Canadian industry, the first thing they said is, “We’re going to walk you.” And they did literally walk us from the PPAI booth at Expo to the SAGE booth at Expo and said, “These are our best friends. You need to meet SAGE. You need to learn how SAGE can bring its technology to the Canadian industry and benefit the Canadian industry.” And so that began a lot of conversations over a few months that led to the partnership we have today with SAGE and with PPAI. And just the fact that distributors in the Canadian industry can, on one invoice, become members of PPPC, members of PPAI, get access to everything that SAGE offers, and we also have a unique partnership with SAGE for our supplier members as well. And so, our supplier members get the SAGE tools they need and access to our membership all in one invoice. So it’s really been beneficial for us. It brings the best of the technology and the association offerings both in Canada and the US all together in a nice package for the Canadian industry.
Literally, Bob walked us, Heidi and I, Bob walked us from, we met with Mary Jo, Paul, yep, Dale, and Bob, and we talked about what we needed, and Paul said, “Well, why aren’t you talking to my technology partner?” And I said, “I don’t know.” And he said, “Well, Bob’s going to take you over there.” And you guys still have the same booth layout with that sort of U. Yeah, we sat there with you and Eric and I think Blake and Jared, and people were walking by. There are a lot of Canadians who attend Expo, and Canadians were walking by, and people were kind of looking like, what’s this meeting and who are these people and what’s going on? And it took about six months to formally announce a partnership, but it’s been a great partnership for us, and it’s our members need great technology. And so for us, not having to be in the technology business and knowing that we’ve got a technology partner, it’s just great for us to say, you need technology, you should be our member, here’s what you get with your membership, and when you need more than that, SAGE has a whole suite of products and services. And we’ve never, I’ve never worked in a place where an association is a better partner than SAGE. And so we have all the confidence in the world to say to our members, you need a website, you need company stores, you need catalogs, SAGE can help you with all that. And it’s just tremendous for our members, and it’s helped us grow the industry in Canada.
DAVID NATINSKY
And I think what’s important about it is, as we all, in full transparency, both organizations spent many years and a lot of money trying to create their own technology portal for the industry, right? And the timing was right. You know, the timing was right for both groups, and I think we both, we both looked and said, you know, we could be a, we feel like we’re a really good technology company, and PPPC, PPAI at the time, were really good associations. But sometimes you have to sit back and stop and make sure that it’s really, you focus on what you’re really good at, and if you can’t do it on your own, then outsource that to someone else. And luckily, today, many, many years later, here we are in 2025, right? The relationship is super strong and continues to grow.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
I mean, we, I think we both essentially, you doubled your number of Canadian customers, we doubled our number of members in under a year of that partnership essentially. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been a great partnership, and I think technology just become, is continuing to be a bigger and bigger need for the industry. And so we’re able to be the community for the Canadian industry and offer education and events and other kinds of programs and leave the technology to the technology experts. And I think it’s just worked really well. And we, you know, every month we’re seeing month after month of growth, especially on the distributor side.
DAVID NATINSKY
And I think it’s just the last thing I’ll say is it is a good partnership. You know, you joke, and you’re going to edit this out, I hope, you know, that you talked to my wife, you talked to my, my wife during this six months of creating this relationship, like, I mean to me, sorry, you and I talked more than my wife and I probably talked because he would be calling me at 9:00 p.m. at night and, you know, weekends and like, who’s this guy from Canada that keeps calling me? But we pushed it through really quickly, and it was fast, and it, I think collectively we, the members, the association, I mean, you, us, it’s a, it’s a partnership, and we say all the time, we never want to pull the contract out and have to look at it. I don’t think we ever have had to pull the contract out to look at it because it is more of a great partnership between the two.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
We’re growing together, right? And that’s, you know, the value of a good partnership is that both sides win. And so, we don’t keep score.
DAVID NATINSKY
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
I think we covered half your questions there, didn’t we? Good. I think we’re pretty good. Are we done now? You can go get your Emmy, and it’s all fine. We actually might be able to get you an Emmy here.
DAVID NATINSKY
Yeah, we could actually, we could, and you can put whatever name, put whatever name you want on it.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
Yeah, I think we know a guy.
DAVID NATINSKY
We do, we do.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
But literally, I think we can get you an Academy Award, an Emmy, an Oscar, whatever you want, you can have all of them. The EGOT, right? Is that what it is? Oh yeah. Did you see how good Rebecca is? She knew that these. Yeah, she’s, I could see her going, “Okay, shoot, what did we cover? What didn’t we cover?”
We are the Canadian industry, and so everything we do is all about how we help to grow and improve the Canadian industry. And so, making sure that the Canadian industry has access to the best technology tools is really core to our mission. We want our members to be successful, and so by having a strong technology partner in SAGE, it helps us help our members improve and grow their businesses. And so, we get to focus on our events and on our education, and we bring SAGE into those things, but we allow SAGE to focus on technology that our members need. And so, we have a partner that brings the members the tools they need in real-time updates and all those things allows us to focus on what an association does. Associations are not typically in the technology business, and so we’re not in the technology business, but we bring a great technology to our members.
DAVID NATINSKY
So, the partnership and relationship is, over the years since we started it, it wasn’t cookie cutter, right? We didn’t just implement this, and all of a sudden all the members, you know, had everything they wanted, right? So over the years, we had a roadmap of implementing features that a lot, most of the features were Canadian specific, that obviously a lot of them were Canadian specific that we added. So, as the product grew over time, and we worked on translations, and we worked on French, and we put it through all the modules, our ultimate goal from a corporate standpoint, and ties directly into what we look at offering members of PPPC, is a way for them to run their entire business. And so, the modules continued to grow, and over time, at the beginning, it was product research for the Canadian market, and once we could do presentations in French for that segment, we moved that through. If it’s CRM or order management, basically, it’s made it through every single module now to where the ultimate focus for a member of PPPC is that they don’t have to go anywhere else to run their business as efficiently and effectively as they can. And then tying in a lot of Canadian specific advertising, and we’re trying to, we’re trying to make it not be a white-label product that we just used for Canada. We’re trying to make it a product that looks and feels like it was created for that subset of the market. And there were challenges at the beginning, and working on, you know, translation wasn’t always great. Every year that got better, but today, our ultimate goal is that they use SAGE services, SAGE products, the modules that are in SAGE, and they can feel that they’re moving through the process from a client to an order to a supply placing order that it’s very seamless, very easy, and they can spend more time selling, which is what their job is. So, we want to be all the backend, we want to be as painless and not a pain point for a distributor, and that continues to grow every year. We come out with new services and new ideas and new features that help with that. And, you know, AI, we were joking a minute ago about how it described our relationship together, and I thought it did a really great job. But, you know, things like AI are now a huge thing, and we implement things like that that help distributors to quickly and easily, I would say very easy today, create presentations and language and descriptions that we couldn’t do a year ago, and now that’s changed. And so, the ease of running their business is the ultimate goal.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
Distributors are using – our distributor members are using – the SAGE product research tool, and they’re using that to build out their presentations and their orders. And so, it was important to us that our suppliers also get access to technology through their membership with us. And so, having that partnership with SAGE that allows suppliers to have those listings and to be able to enhance what they’re doing and know that they’re integrating into what so many Canadian distributors are using. So, suppliers having Canadian price lists, having really good information about where they’re shipping from, and so for Canadian suppliers, they are driving their distributors to use SAGE because the investment suppliers are making in the quality of information in SAGE. And so, SAGE is a great tool for those suppliers. And one of the things that both on the supplier and distributor side I see as my role is we bring the feedback from our community from Canada to SAGE, and we advocate, and we’re never told no, we’re sometimes told not tomorrow, but we get to come forward as the voice of Canada to SAGE and say, this is the conversation we’re having, this is what we’re hearing from our members. And so, distributors and suppliers, you know, those features are there, and we know that there’s a roadmap for more tools for suppliers to reach Canadian distributors through the SAGE platform. That wasn’t a day one thing, but it’s a day three, four, five project, and so there’s more tools coming. And I’m always excited, you know, we meet with SAGE at least once a year to talk about what’s coming next, and it always reflects what members are asking for.
We have been recently hearing from members talk about growing their business as a distributor and talking about feeling like their technology stack, this seems to be the new phrase, they don’t feel like it’s keeping up. And what I say to distributors is, challenge your SAGE rep, challenge SAGE, and tell them what your problems are because either they’ve got a solution you just don’t know about it, or they’re working on it. And so, business for distributors is getting more complicated. There’s more company stores, there’s more warehouse and fulfillment, there’s more complex commission structure. So, the technology needs of a distributor and a supplier are getting more complicated, and as an association, we have confidence that our technology partner SAGE is listening to that and is working towards that and probably knows it better than their customers even know what they need. So, as distributors are growing, and they’re like, “Hey, maybe this isn’t enough for me,” I really challenge our distributors, call your SAGE sales rep, ask them, tell them what your pain points are. And if they say no, we can’t do that, call me back and let’s ask the question in a different way and see if we can figure out, is it on the road map? Because the secret is that you don’t tell customers what you’re going to release in 18 months because it might take an extra day. It happens with technology. So, you know, we really encourage our members, ask, push SAGE, because we’ve never heard a hard no. We’ve heard maybe it’s tomorrow, not today, but we know that SAGE is paying attention to the technology needs of tomorrow. And AI, like we’ve talked about, you know, the AI tools SAGE is getting into that, and we know there’s more coming. I don’t know what all of it is, but I imagine you’ve got a multi-year road map for AI.
I know, I know, but he’s recording, so you can’t tell me. Okay, that too.
DAVID NATINSKY
You’re exactly right. You know, what we’ve been for 30 plus years creating tools and services for distributors and suppliers that are 100% based upon feedback from the customer, right? It may, and with that feedback, they may not get what they’re looking for next week or next month or next year because obviously everyone has their own roadmap on what they think is the what they want to see in SAGE tools. But I think an important point that you brought up is that we find, we were, we created ourselves as a research tool 30 plus years ago. And if you ask most people today, there’s a subset will say, “Oh my, they, they run our whole business, they do everything. I use all their tools, I do CRM and I do order management, I do everything and it’s awesome.” And then you have a bigger subset that say, “I do presentations and I do, I do my product research, I create a presentation and then I stop,” right? And I think to your point, and one of our biggest challenges over the years is that we do offer tools that will, will, will fulfill everything that distributor needs to run their business. So how do we get them to stop for a second, educate themselves for a second, go down the list and learn the email campaigns, it’s payment processing, whatever, all these things are that the rep, you know, only has so much time, they only have so much time. So I think we cater to those distributors which are the, you know, there, 85, 90% of the industry that’s, you know, doing under a couple million dollars. And then there’s the larger distributors that we’re integrated with almost all of them, and integration is the big word today, right? How do we integrate? And we’re integrated with almost every one of them. And we continue to grow with inventory and those, those eliminating those pain points that the distributor, so we hope to grow and we hope to stay ahead of the game. But like you said, just like the big phone carriers out there that are coming out with phones, they know what they’re coming out with next year and the year after, they don’t put everything into one phone or you’d never buy another phone, right? So we do the same thing, and we have pages and pages and pages of what’s coming new, and we try to stay that far ahead of technology, but that’s hard. It’s growing really fast, and we’re trying to stay ahead of it, but we’re also trying to make sure that we’re continuing to add value and tools to your customers, supplier side and distributor side, to do their, make sure their business is running.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
And what I always remind our members is that our events are a great opportunity to stand with somebody from SAGE and stand at a computer, or with your phone, or with your tablet, and say, “How do I do this? How do you help?”
And so, the fact that at every single event we put on as an association, SAGE has a presence, they, you know, the SAGE team makes an effort to be there. And so it’s a great opportunity for distributors, you know, to get their handheld while they learn how to do something. And yes, there are all kinds of resources from SAGE videos, webinars, and support over the phone. But our events, I mean, we are in many cities across Canada every year with SAGE bringing SAGE experts to our members, and I think it’s a really great opportunity for our members to come out to the events, come shop with your favorite suppliers, find new suppliers, and learn how to get better at using the tools that SAGE brings you.
Because we want to make sure our members are using all those tools. They’re paying for them, so we want them to use them and use them effectively, right? So for us, it’s great that SAGE is committed to being at our events with us to help our members learn and really hold their hand. I mean, listen, we all need somebody to hold their hand sometimes. And so, knowing that SAGE has that team there that will show you, “Maybe this is a different way of approaching how you’re doing this,” or “Here’s a new feature you didn’t know was there,” having the SAGE staff at our events, being up in Canada all the time to help our members with their businesses and their technology needs is a huge plus. It’s not just a website and, you know, a help chat. There are people behind it at SAGE, and our members, I know, really value that support that they get once they’re a member of ours and getting access to SAGE as a customer.
DAVID NATINSKY
The relationship between PPAI, PPPC, and SAGE is, I would say, the culmination of the leading providers from technology and from an industry association to create, it’s a marketing relationship to where we take the best of both worlds and allow a seamless opportunity for someone to become a member of the association and/or a subscriber of our tools and services, and it streamlines the process of gaining access to both platforms and both tools.
JONATHAN STRAUSS
We’re really fortunate to have a technology partner that means all of our members get the best technology available in the promotional products industry as part of their membership. So they’re not having to search for something else, that is part of their membership. And so, it for us, it makes our job as an association easier because we know our members have access to a great tool to have a great business.
And so, technology is such a backbone of everything people do today. So just having that strong partnership with SAGE means we say to somebody, “Yes, we want you to join, and you want to join for all the reasons you traditionally join an association, but even better, we’re going to give you the technology you need to run your business as part of your membership.” I can’t think of another example where you’ve got an industry association that has such an integrated partnership. You can become our member through us, or you can become a member through SAGE. And so, it’s so seamless that it doesn’t matter whether you want to buy the technology as your primary reason or you want to become an association member as your primary reason, it’s a 1A and 1B. It’s not a “one/two” and we’ll help you become a member, or SAGE will help you become a member and get access to what you need. So it really, it is seamless, it couldn’t be any easier for companies in the industry in Canada to get what they need from an association and from a technology standpoint.
And I over here, because we often have our booths next to each other, and I often overhear, or I’ll talk to Blake’s team and Blake about, like, “Yeah, that person walked away smiling from ear to ear because they’ve been frustrated for so long, they didn’t know how to do something, and in three and a half minutes, maybe ten minutes, you know, some takes a little longer, I showed them how to do this, and they’re like, their eyes just opened up wide, like, ‘I didn’t know that feature was there.'”
So, it’s probably like the marketers in the room joke about, like, if only people would read what we send out. It’s the same thing on the training side, right? And so, I tell distributors and suppliers, when you’re at our events, take advantage of the fact that the SAGE team is there, go and learn. Because from suppliers too, we hear, “Oh, well, I’m not the one who loads the content, I don’t know what we’re loading.” Well, ask your SAGE rep to show you, show you what a distributor sees. So I think suppliers could also do more of that, like use the system, see what a distributor is seeing. And I’ve had some suppliers come back and go, “Oh my, we’re loading products that we haven’t sold in a long time.” So suppliers being able to go back, talk to their SAGE rep, talk to somebody in person, like there’s a lot of value in that, right?
I think we all, I think we all like the opportunity to sit with somebody and learn and point and click on things and see how it works. And so the events are a big advantage, and I don’t think that’s going away. Even ChatGPT probably won’t replace all that.
GABE GOTAY
Hopefully, ChatGPT won’t replace me either.
I want to thank David and Jonathan for coming on and giving us such a wonderful interview. Hopefully, you learned a lot about the background behind the partnership and everything that it does to help support the promotional products industry overall and specifically members based in Canada. Keep an eye out, we have a lot of great episodes coming out to Promo Perspectives soon, so please subscribe, and we will see you on the next one!