Facilisgroup is eager to up its game when it comes to e-commerce.

To lead the aimed-for advancement, the St. Louis, MO-based promotional products technology and partnering group has hired Whitney Meahl as its new director of stores. Meahl, who also joins the Facilisgroup director team, will be responsible for research and development related to important initiatives for the growing organization too, executives said.

“We’re excited to have Whitney join our team,” said Ashley McCune, chief operating officer of Facilisgroup. “Her extensive experience on the program side of our industry, along with her keen instinct of anticipating our partner needs, gives us the confidence that she will take our stores initiative to the next level.”

Meahl, who has more than 12 years of promo experience, comes to Facilisgroup from Brand Addition USA (asi/202515), a St. Louis-based distributorship that was Gateway CDI before being acquired by U.K.-based Brand Addition in 2016. Meahl was most recently Brand Addition’s U.S. vice president of sales and customer service. While at Brand Addition, her work included being on the program team for more than nine years. In that capacity, she identified new solutions within its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and assisted in the development of solutions for client-specific business needs using the ERP platform.

Facilisgroup says it’s looking to hire nine additional people. All available positions are listed in the careers section of the organization’s website.

In 2018, Facilisgroup promo distributor members increased year-over-year sales 10% on average. The surge, which outpaced promo distributors’ industry growth of nearly 5%, pushed Facilisgroup distributor revenue to $767 million in sales from industry suppliers.