ASI – A Case History:

The present success of ASI is largely due to the vision of its founders, the guidance of its managers and the hard work and dedication of its employees.

The Advertising Specialty Institute® (ASI) began as the brainchild of Joe Segel in 1950, who as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, decided to put his academic interest in business and marketing into practice as a distributor of promotional products. Thus, ASI was born.

Under the credo, "an informed businessperson is a better businessperson," ASI introduced many new products, services and concepts – which became the foundation and the standard for doing business in the specialty advertising field. For several years in the fifties, ASI sponsored a trade show for the specialty advertising industry. Information was the business of ASI.

Cohn Family Expands ASI

"Be proud. Stand tall. Work hard to achieve the objectives that enable you to do both. Make it your business to find the time and reason to smile. And to make the next person feel a little better for it each day" – –Maurice Cohn

Prior to acquiring ASI, the Cohn family business was the largest supplier in the specialty advertising industry with a variety of activities under the umbrella name WICO, which stood for Waterloo Iowa Companies, and included Holiday Foods, Distinguished Gifts, King Midas, Select–a–Gift Institute, and Galaxy. After acquiring ASI, the Cohn family, in order to preclude the possibility that ASI customers might incorrectly assume a possible conflict of interest, sold those companies. Several are running successfully today.

Shortly after the Cohn family acquired ASI, Marvin Spike was hired as a promotion copywriter and advanced rapidly to become President and Chief Operating Officer of ASI in 1973 and Vice Chairman in 1999.

Under Marvin Spike’s leadership, ASI has grown to more than 500 employees. While we have many new and talented employees, we also have many extremely valuable colleagues who've been here for many years, including twenty who have served at ASI for more than twenty years.

ASI Greets The Millennium With Innovation

The Cohn family has been in the promotional products industry for 100 years. "ASI celebrated its 50th anniversary in the Year 2000. Our most important products are not our numbering system or trade name and services, but our reputation with our customers and our employees. Our family prides itself on the number of employees who have been with us many, many years, and are also proud of the growth we continue to have in Bucks County."

ASI has aggressively embraced the challenges and opportunities of the twenty–first century. The Company pioneers technology for the promotional products industry. For example, we were among the first to introduce CD–ROM technology, DVD technology and now a vast array of services via the Internet. The following products are examples of cutting–edge technology:

ESP^®

ASI created ESP in 1989 to provide the electronic media source programs on CD–ROM. The advent of ESP was the first ASI venture into electronic publishing; a venture that was well ahead of most other business publishers and that changed many promotional product buying habits and set the pace for creative and thorough sourcing for the industry. It is now available on DVD and contains information on more than 775,000 products.

ASInternet^®

In July of 1995, ASI introduced the concept of an online central buying location PromoMart® to the promotional products industry. We officially went live in the beginning of 1996 and have continued to develop and enhance the product.

Buyers are able to browse through an online catalog containing over 100,000 different products from over 1000 participating suppliers. Once they find the products they want to purchase, they may purchase them from one of approximately 4000 distributors. In addition, all participating suppliers and distributors get their own private addresses that ASInternet houses and maintains, which they can promote to their own customers. ASInternet also maintains ASICentral® – which is a password–protected industry–only Web site providing our subscribers with access to our supplier information, magazines, newsletters, and ASI–Groups, which is the most comprehensive Internet discussion service in the promotional products industry.

"ASI has always prided itself not only on being a family owned, but also a family operated business and a Company that cares about family. We are happy to have employees with relatives and second generation family members working here. If you join our business, we hope to provide an environment in which you grow and thrive." ––Norman Cohn, Chairman of the Board.

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