Sai Koppaka’s grandmother raised him. She was smart and tough, and always encouraged her grandson to dream big.

While the remarkable woman passed away a few years ago, Koppaka has carried her legacy forward.

Persistent, resilient and bold enough to push for market-disrupting innovations, Koppaka is making his mark as the president and CEO of one of the biggest and most technologically advanced companies in promo – Florida-based BEL USA, the parent firm of Top 40 e-commerce-driven distributor DiscountMugs.com (asi/181120) and supplier BEL Promo (asi/39552). And as the companies continue to push the envelope, it’s Koppaka’s leadership and mind for technology that serves as a major driving force.

“I’m motivated by learning and constant self-improvement,” says the 39-year-old. “If I feel like I’ve stopped learning, then it’s time to make a change. Nothing drives me crazier than feeling stagnant and being comfortable.”

For sure, Koppaka has kept ahead of the complacency curve in an impressive career that’s seen him develop digital-age solutions for household name brands.

Koppaka joined the promo industry five years ago after spending three years directing e-commerce strategy and digital marketing for Sears Holding Corporation. Before that, the man with degrees in mechanical engineering and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business spent nearly three years each with Charles Schwab and Orbitz.

“As soon as you start cutting corners and turn away from customer needs to focus purely on short-term goals, you will stop being successful.” Sai Koppaka, BEL USA

In his previous positions, Koppaka’s mission was, in significant part, to enhance e-commerce offerings to make the purchasing process easier for customers. “No matter the industry, you must always listen to the voice of the customer,” says Koppaka, who decided to join BEL USA because he was excited by the prospect of being able to innovate and make a difference at the firm. “As soon as you start cutting corners and turn away from customer needs to focus purely on short-term goals, you will stop being successful.”

Speaking to that philosophy under his leadership, DiscountMugs has forged technology-fueled advancements with the aim of providing rapid fulfillment and virtually frictionless ordering.

“We’re always looking to solve customer issues. Sometimes it takes innovative solutions to fix the problem,” says Koppaka. “For example, our art process used to have a 24-hour turnaround. We realized it wasn’t good enough if we wanted to deliver orders faster. We worked with our technology team to automate the process, and we cut the time an order takes to get from our shopping cart to production from 24 hours to 15 minutes.”

That quantum leap forward was integral to overarching improvements in fulfillment speed. Koppaka and the DiscountMugs tech team built an automated order-to-ship capability that enables an order to be sent on its way to the customer in as little as three hours. It’s an algorithmically powered soup-to-nuts solution that includes art creation, picking, printing, packing and shipping. “We all need to embrace technology to meet customers’ expectations and deliver orders better, faster and cheaper,” says Koppaka. “If not, we’ll be left behind.”

The approach is working for DiscountMugs. Says Koppaka: “The speed and intelligence of our process has helped us ship orders much faster, with fewer errors, which has led to highly satisfied and loyal customers.”

As DiscountMugs has remained firmly in the Top 10 of industry distributors, Koppaka’s profile continues to rise within the industry, with Koppaka and BEL USA Vice President/General Manager Alan Tabasky jointly ranking 11th on the most recent Counselor Power 50 list.

Says Tabasky: “There are two essential elements that make Sai such an effective leader: his ability to present a vision as well as his honesty and humility.”

A Leader for Good Times & Bad
On the subject of honesty, Koppaka admits his career hasn’t been all roses. Still, he views the setbacks as valuable. “You learn more from your failures than your successes,” he says.

DiscountMugs.com suffered a data breach in 2018 that involved hackers siphoning off customers’ personal information from the website’s shopping cart. Once the company learned of the hacking, it acted swiftly, launching an investigation and retaining a leading computer security firm. Following the immediate crisis, the distributor provided identify theft protection to affected customers at no charge and greatly improved its security posture based on findings of the investigation.

Heading up BEL USA comes with unique challenges, too. Since the company owns a distributorship and supplier, there’s a belief among some in the industry that DiscountMugs steals distributors’ end-clients through BEL Promo and/or that BEL Promo sells direct through DiscountMugs. But both Koppaka (and Tabasky) have taken pains to emphasize that these are misperceptions; the companies are siloed and function separately, with no direct selling or customer-filching.

Meanwhile, Koppaka’s role at Sears presented myriad challenges – everything from the competitive landscape to strategic issues with the brand. (After years of pronounced struggles, the famed retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2018.) While Koppaka feels he didn’t achieve what he aimed to with Sears, he says “it was the best learning experience of my career. I learned you can’t always control the outcome. As long as you do good work and learn from your mistakes, you’ll become a better leader and better contributor. I’ve learned to not get disheartened and to persevere.”

Koppaka’s level-headed temperament, combined with a sharp ability to interpret data and act nimbly to adapt to changing conditions, has helped BEL USA navigate during the unprecedented disruption experienced during the coronavirus pandemic. As the threat reared, Koppaka led the company’s proactive response. The business was scaled appropriately, and opportunities were spotted in the data.

“For instance, we saw early on that wellness products would be very much in demand and we used our sourcing capabilities to ramp up that category very quickly,” says Koppaka. “We’ve continued to navigate by letting the trends in data and customer needs guide our path. These changes have helped us offset the challenges in core promotional product demand. We’ve also used the relative downtime to improve our systems and processes so we can be even more efficient when things get better.”

Adds Tabasky: “Sai instills a sense of trust and helps build the type of relationships you need to prosper in better times and persevere through the tough ones.”

Koppaka makes sure to acknowledge that the team he leads has contributed to BEL’s success. “DiscountMugs has always been a bit of a pioneer in the promotional products space with its e-commerce-only model,” he says. “I’m proud of having worked with our phenomenal technology team to further enhance our strengths. We’ve built a fantastic team with a great mix of experts from both within and outside the industry. The investment we’ve made in our people over the past four years is what I’m most proud of.”