Last week, PPAI Associate Editor Danielle Renda (above center) and News Editor James Khattak (above left) visited supplier BEST Promotions USA (PPAI 461489) in Balch Springs, Texas, to speak to the company’s staff, tour its facility and learn more about its operations.

Industry veteran Michael Hicks (above right), Best Promotions’ president, founded the company in 2007 and has grown it into a successful industry supplier that manufacturers about 70 percent of its products in the USA. The company was acquired by Hub Promotional Group (PPAI 110772) in November 2017.

Grant VanWinkle, multimedia designer and shipping manager at BEST Promotions, guided Renda and Khattak through the company’s operations, giving an up-close look at the range of drinkware and drinkware-related items such as Neoprene coolies and coasters the company offers. On the tour, VanWinkle also highlighted how BEST Promotions works with distributors and how its focus on customer service drives its philosophy and company structure. He explained how the supplier’s organization chart is relatively flat and favors cross-training to leave as few barriers as possible between clients and the business.

Hicks reiterated BEST Promotions’ customer service focus, saying, “When we started the company, our motto was just ‘Championship Service.’ But then it evolved to ‘We say yes.’ We built BEST based on service, and the service was really behind how we were going to say ‘yes’ to things, and behind that was cross-training our people.”