Brothers David and Mitch Weintraub placed their desks next to each other in their early workspaces, first in Mitch’s townhouse and later in a small office.

The pair sold promo products parallel to one another. Taking advantage of growing industry in 1990s Atlanta, the Weintraubs knocked on doors, worked the phones and built their clientele call by call.

The brothers celebrated each other’s wins with a high-five across their desks – but for the big sales, the milestones – the founders of Pinnacle Promotions (asi/295986), one of Counselor’s 2024 Best Places to Work, went to the nearby Longhorn Steakhouse.

“It was kind of our thing,” CEO David Weintraub says.

Now that Pinnacle Promotions has reached its 30^th anniversary, it might be time for another steak dinner. The distributor has served a loyal customer base since 1994, sustaining its business by adapting to changing economic climates and building strong relationships.

Brothers Mitch (left) and David Weintraub founded Pinnacle Promotions (asi/295986) in 1994.

Its origin story is not what makes Pinnacle Promotions unique, but rather its survival story.

“We started as a typical promotional products company, just like everybody else,” David says, describing the business’ genesis: the Weintraub brothers and their friend selling T-shirts out of a University of Florida dorm room during college.

After graduating, David went to law school and Mitch got his MBA in marketing, but they came to a similar realization.

“We both decided that we did not want to have real jobs,” David says. “We didn’t want to have to wear a suit every day.”

Mitch launched Pinnacle Promotions in the aforementioned townhouse, and David joined soon after. The pair split from their non-fraternal business partner, who went into apparel, to focus on hard goods.

They spent the next few years high-fiving and eating steaks, promoting themselves and their products to new businesses in Atlanta – a city on the rise thanks to the 1996 Olympics and young people moving in. In 1997, the game changed for Pinnacle.

“We kind of stumbled across the internet,” David says with a smirk.

The company built its first website and started using GoogleAdWords, an online advertising program now called GoogleAds. The brothers invested a few dollars a week, “a nickel a click,” but weren’t sure if this latest technology fad – the internet – would pan out.

“We went through like two or three weeks, we spent like $25 or $30, and we didn’t get anything. It was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. Is this going to work?’” David says. “Then we got an order from a company in Louisiana for $15,000. We were like, ‘OK, I think this might be something here. We should probably look into this.’”

The company rode the wave of the dot-com bubble, a period of rapid growth for online companies during the late 1990s, and steadied the ship after the bubble burst in the early 2000s, causing many of those small companies to fail and shut down. Pinnacle learned from this hardship, and it helped the company prepare for future economic catastrophes.

Pinnacle brought in now-President Steve Jennings in 2008, conveniently right before the global financial crisis, and he rose through the ranks working in a plethora of accounting roles. The Weintraub duo had become a trio. The fresh face and ideas helped Mitch run the back-of-house financials and allowed David to focus on sales, harnessing his entrepreneurial energy as Pinnacle worked through this transition period.

“They needed more controls, processes, protocols. Immediate decisions had to be made to ensure that Pinnacle continued,” Jennings says. “Resources were stretched thin, but rather than just kind of clam up into the fetal position, we were hyper-focused on how we make things better.”

Again, Pinnacle rebounded, surviving by the team’s repositioning and adapting to the new environment. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, they applied the lessons they’d learned in 2008 to get through the difficulties of the pandemic – and came out of it a better company.

“It was a slow recovery, but it was very controlled. Very similar to the pandemic. We were in a slightly disadvantaged situation, but we still had the mentality of improvement,” Jennings says. “We’ve had some challenges, but we will always learn from them.”

Jennings says 2022 was one of the best years in the company’s history, and Pinnacle is ahead of its 2024 sales target by double digits.

Mitch stepped down as CEO in 2018, which expanded Jennings’ role in Pinnacle. Jennings was promoted to president in 2023.

Pinnacle Promotions has been named a Counselor Best Place to work seven times, placing 60^th on this year’s list.

David and Jennings attribute Pinnacle’s longevity to its people, both long-standing customers and long-tenured employees. With seven appearances on Counselor’s Best Places to Work list, the distributor was most recently lauded by its employees for attributes like flexible work arrangements, alignment with company goals and team cooperation. The firm has an average employee tenure of around seven years, with some employees staying much longer, according to David. Customers, too, have stuck with the distributor – some from the very beginning.

“To me, the people are the catalyst for everything we do,” Jennings says. “We wouldn’t be able to without them.”