The Journey to Rank #45 in the PPAI100.
In 2019, we decided to get serious about where we wanted to go as a company.
iCoStore had been around for 17 years, and while we had a solid team and strong client relationships, were growing every year, we were building things year by year, solving problems as they came. It was working, but it wasn’t strategic. We were doing $6 million in annual sales…respectable, but nowhere near the full potential we believed was possible.
That’s when we formed our first executive team.
Our CTO Eric had previously built and sold a tech company. He brought a new level of strategic thinking to the table and encouraged us to read a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t much of a reader at the time, but that book changed how I thought about business. It laid out simple, actionable steps to create structure, define goals, and scale a company the right way.
Setting the Vision
One of the first things Traction challenged us to do was create our BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
After some deep thinking and debate, we landed on two clear long-term targets:
- 10X our revenue to $60 million by 2029.
- Break into the top 40 promotional product distributors in the country.
Those were big goals, especially for a company sitting at $6 million in revenue and operating in an industry with 20,000+ distributors. But we believed in our on-demand model, tech and infrastructure and knew we had something unique to offer.
Laying the Foundation
We didn’t rush it. Instead, we focused on what had to happen first, building the internal infrastructure that would allow us to scale without breaking.
We hired high-quality people and invested heavily in our proprietary on-demand production platform, which was good, but needed work to scale to enterprise levels. We tightened our processes and workflows. And most importantly, we made the decision to grow responsibly.
During that time, I watched a lot of companies around us grow fast, some much faster than we were. But I’ve never believed in selling something we can’t execute with excellence, and scaling on-demand production is difficult. I didn’t want to make promises to potential clients if I wasn’t absolutely confident we could deliver. So, we held back on aggressive business development and focused instead on becoming bulletproof behind the scenes.
- We grew without debt.
- We turned down business we weren’t ready for, and figured out who we were and who our perfect client was.
- We had to part with some existing clients who didn’t fit out model and become very picky about who we selected as future partners.
Fast Forward to 2025
This year, we hit a huge milestone.
- We surpassed $19 million in revenue in 2024
- We built an on-demand production model that we believe is the most scalable in the industry.
- We assembled a top-tier leadership team that brings clarity, direction, and accountability.
- And just last week, we were named to the PPAI100, ranking #45 out of over 20,000+ distributors.
That second BHAG, the top 40 goal, is suddenly within reach.
What This Means
The PPAI100 ranking isn’t just a number. It’s a reflection of years of focused effort, of saying “not yet” when it would’ve been easier to say yes, and of doing things the hard way when it meant building something sustainable.
It’s also a moment of clarity: We’re ready.
We’ve built the infrastructure. We’ve built the technology. We’ve built the team. Now we’re building the brand and actively looking for new clients who need solutions.
We’ve proven we can handle thousands of unique, single-piece and bulk orders daily through our highly automated, streamlined platform and internal decoration facility. Our tech works. Our team works. And now we’re ready to scale.
To Our Clients and Our Team
To our clients: thank you for trusting us, challenging us, and sticking with us as we’ve evolved. You’ve helped shape what iCoStore is today.
To our team: this ranking is yours. It’s the result of your dedication, your work ethic, and your belief that we could build something special.
What’s Next?
We’re just getting started and plan to continue to move up the PPAI100 rankings while innovating new technology and providing the best solutions for company stores in the industry. If you’re a brand that needs a better way to manage and deliver company merchandise, uniforms, swag, or anything in between…let’s talk. We’d love to show you what we’ve built.
