Born in Israel, Taylor Tadmor moved to the U.S. when he was 13 years old because his parents thought it would provide him a better opportunity. Over the past 15 years, the president of Hauppauge, NY-based Tekweld (asi/90807) has been hell-bent on proving his parents right.

Podcast

In this interview, Michele Bell talks to the charismatic, colorful president of Tekweld and the 2019 Supplier Entrepreneur of the Year about the guerilla marketing strategies he used to get started, industry trends he’s watching and how he grew his revenue 300% over the last five years.

Tadmor graduated from Stony Brook University with a marketing degree and spent five years in the finance industry before selling offset printing to advertising agencies and liquor brands. When his friend took him to a local promotional products trade show, Tadmor noticed 90% of the goods were decorated mostly in one color. He had his epiphany and decided to bring full-color process items to the industry.

“I figured if I could make the item look better and offer fair market value with great customer service, people would come,” Tadmor says.

Customers certainly haven’t stopped coming. With five-star ratings in ESP performance categories such as product quality, delivery and imprinting, it’s easy to see why Tekweld’s sales grew 25% in 2018. And over the past five years, Tekweld’s revenue has jumped a staggering 300%. Tadmor says the company has never experienced a down year.

“I work my balls off,” he says with a laugh. “Starting out, I couldn’t afford factory reps or multiline reps, so I hit the pavement and did a lot of guerrilla marketing. I would grab a company’s logo from their website, redraw it and put it on hand sanitizer, lip balm and microfiber cloths. When they received the product samples, they always got that wow factor.”

Tadmor picked those items because they were small and he was operating in a very limited space – a 1,800-square-foot office. These days, Tadmor has expanded his one-man army into over 300 employees working out of an 84,000-square-foot factory. They built the company’s ERP system from the ground up, continually conceive new product ideas and have maintained a breakneck pace for workflow in the digital age.

“We’re only as good as our last job and worst employee,” Tadmor says. “That’s all distributors remember.”