There are people who show up in the industry, seemingly out of nowhere, and are so innately cool – like Dean-Martin-in-a-tux-with-a-tumbler-of-scotch-after-a-late-late-night cool – it’s like they’ve always been here. The 2018 Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year has that je ne sais quoi and joie de vivre in spades and has made such an impression in the marketplace that like Bono, Mick and Keith before him, a singular name is sufficient to identify him: Mitch. And let’s be clear: Rarely has someone embodied the phrase “work hard and play hard” with the gusto of Mitch Mounger.

Mitch Mounger, CEO of Top 40 distributor Sunrise Identity and this year’s Counselor Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year.

“Mitch is the industry, and here’s what’s great about it,” says CJ Schmidt, president of Top 40 supplier Hit Promotional Products. “We met many years ago at an ASI Power Summit, and as we were having a few drinks we pretty much became great friends instantaneously. A couple of weeks later, he called me and said ‘CJ, I have a monster order for you, but I need your help.’ I thought to myself, ‘OK, no problem, what do we need to do?’ He let me know the order was for $400,000 and he needed 60-day terms. I asked who the end-user was, and we had an agreement. He, by the way, paid us in 55 days. The moral of the story is that we trusted one another, and from that point on both our personal relationship and business relationship has flourished. Mitch is the type of guy everyone wants to hang out with, but what they don’t often realize is how hard he works and how smart he is. If there were more Mitchs in this industry and, quite frankly, the world, we’d all be much better off.”

The Dawn of Sunrise
With a history adjacent to the industry in that his father owned an outerwear company as he was growing up, Mounger just always assumed that’s where he’d have a career – until his father up and sold the business. “I was in college and had to rethink my job prospects,” Mounger acknowledges. “I ended up getting my commercial real estate license, selling office space, and it was frat-guy central. I was in a suit and tie every day, but it taught me how to sell.”

The genesis of Sunrise happened in 1989 when his sister, Mindy Blakeslee, started an apparel company selling garment-dyed T-shirts to retailers; Mounger joined the business in 1994, as did his dad, Larry, and his two brothers-in-law James and Nick Rensch. Together, they oversaw the entity that was Sunrise Clothing Group, a screen-printing entity the family bought to keep up with the demand of decorating shirts for Kohl’s department store.

But the real epiphany for how the company discovered the promo industry in its totality came with the hiring of Mark Lynch, Sunrise’s COO and Mounger’s right hand. “Mark was selling T-shirts to a small Seattle-based coffee company called Starbucks,” Mounger says, laughing. When the company wanted to expand to branded merchandise and an online store, it naturally went to Sunrise, spurring a dramatic growth in the company, its capabilities and a fast learning curve on topics like compliance. The addition of key senior team members Tom Economou, SVP/sales, and Tim Klabo, CFO, pushed Sunrise to the next level.

“I remember when Mark and I were at the cocktail reception at our first Power Summit – we didn’t know anybody and we were watching all these people who’d been so successful and friends forever, having a blast,” Mounger recalls. “Lynch said, ‘One day, we’re going to be like them and be on the Counselor Top 40 and Power 50 lists.’” Mission accomplished.

Now 49 years old and the CEO of Sunrise Identity, Mounger has been in the industry for 24 years and presides over a company that not only routinely gets named to the Counselor’s Best Places to Work list – as voted on by its 130 employees – but the list of Top 40 distributors as well. Consider that the company grew $18 million, from $56.3 million in 2016 to $74.3 in 2017 – 32% growth. And yes, due to consistent peer voting, he’s been a mainstay on Counselor’s Power 50 list.

With Mounger at the helm, Sunrise has had a five-year overall growth rate of 180%.

Amazon, Primed
Make no mistake, though: If there’s one narrative that’s been piquing the industry’s interest for the past few years about Mounger and Sunrise, it’s the fact that the company has been the proverbial canary in the coalmine for doing business with the online juggernaut that is Amazon. While Sunrise’s five-year overall growth rate from 2012-2017 was 180%, for the last 3.5 years, a fair share of that is due to its fast-growing Amazon sales. A quick search using the keywords “Sunrise Identity” yields 395 products on the site with some quantities as low as 22 ready to be imprinted and shipped in just a few days with a buyer’s marketing message.

Mounger is clear when he explains how the process works, what it is and what it isn’t. “First of all, the customers are Amazon’s, not Sunrise’s,” he says, noting that when his company began selling the industry’s logoed products on Amazon, it started with only a few hundred items; now it offers over 5,000 in 16,000 variances. “Amazon Marketplace is an e-commerce platform owned and operated by Amazon that enables third-party sellers to sell new or used products to Amazon customers alongside its regular offerings. Amazon approached us to sell promotional merchandise on the platform as a part of its expanding offering to business customers, and Sunrise acts as a third-party seller and benefits from customers who are already shopping at Amazon. Since our supplier partners are producing custom products for each customer, we’re not part of the Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) program, which allows for free two-day shipping under the Prime banner.”

It’s no secret that many in the promo space have been twitchy for a while now about not if, but when, Amazon will sit up and notice the $23 billion logoed merch market and do what it does best: study it, circle it and go in for the attack. Mounger, for the record, isn’t going to allay you of those concerns. “People in the industry should be freaked out,” he admits. “Amazon does a really good job of looking at legacy business models and stripping out the middle man while bringing value to the end-user. If they can serve our customers better, they’ll find a way to do it. If you’re only selling on pricing and not bringing expertise, technology and compliance to the table, you’re not going to last long.”

He does concede that this kind of seismic shift isn’t going to happen overnight due to the particular quirks of this industry insofar as the time-consuming nature of imprinting artwork and buyer engagement, often eight to 10 touchpoints per order, that require a lot of customer service hand-holding – a process Amazon isn’t accustomed to. But he does point to one area where this industry is being disrupted at a rapid clip right now. “Everyone is buying everyone,” he says. “We’re a huge, fragmented industry ripe for consolidation. The big will continue to get bigger and more and more buyers will make their purchases online. That being said, full-service/creative agencies will always be relevant, and those that bring true value to the customer will survive.”

The Power of No
Mounger acknowledges, in true entrepreneurial form, that the areas in which Sunrise has always excelled are its willingness to take risks, and to invest heavily in technology and compliance early on. And one area where he had to learn some lessons along the way? Just saying no. “In our early days, we would take any business we could get our hands on without much thought about the lifetime value of the client,” he concedes. “If I was going to offer guidance to other entrepreneurs in our space, I’d say to bring value. Do what you say you’re going to do. Invest in technology. Be creative. Sell solutions, not products. If I could change anything, it would be the preconceived notion people have of our industry. We’re a very important and powerful form of advertising, and I don’t like the perception that we sell trinkets and trash.”

Chuck Fandos, CEO of the Facilis Group and the 2016 Counselor Person of the Year, knows Mounger to be a thoughtful business leader who people love to work for and who runs a company that pampers its clients. “How else could you grow so fast without an amazing team that runs through walls for their buyers?” Fandos asks. “That takes a group effort, and Sunrise has an amazing team. It also takes phenomenal leadership and strategic thinking, and that’s what Mitch brings in the quiet way that nurtures others along and takes them to places they didn’t know they could get. Equally as impressive, he also finds time to give back to this industry both in volunteering and mentoring – but more importantly, in his late-night bar contributions at industry events … but that’s another article,” Fandos laughs.

Words to live by from the inimitable Mitch Mounger: “Work hard, have fun and don’t be a dick.”

As only he can, what with his self-deprecating, deadpan style, Mounger leaves you with a parting shot of advice: “I’ve surrounded myself with people way smarter than I am, and made it a point to make company culture my top priority because here’s what I’ve learned: You can easily fix processes; fixing culture is much harder,” he says. “This is the greatest industry around – I’ve made some incredible lifelong friends and am the luckiest guy in the world. Just remember: Work hard, have fun and don’t be a dick.”

Michele Bell oversees ASI’s Editorial, Events & Education platforms.