ASI® Announces 2005 ASItransact™ Advisory Board

TREVOSE, PA – July 11, 2005 – Advertising Specialty Institute ® (ASI) announced today the volunteer members of its 2005 ASItransact advisory board. The group will provide strategic direction for developments of ASItransact, the promotional products industry’s top online order management system.

The board is comprised of leaders representing all sizes of distributor and supplier companies and brings a broad perspective at a time when ASItransact is gaining momentum in the marketplace.  Order volume today is significantly higher than the same period one year ago and more users than ever before are leveraging its capabilities to directly integrate features from popular accounting software packages, including QuickBooks, ProfitMaker® sand ProfitPro®. 

The group is comprised of:

  • All-In-One (asi/342526) – Harris Cohen, president
  • Goldman Associates (asi/209700) – Don Eatherton, vice president of operations
  • World Wide Line (asi/98290) – Mark Hobbs, president
  • Adva-Lite (asi/32145) – Jim Kelley, vice president of sales
  • Showdown Displays (asi/87188) – John Lundberg, president
  • Bluegrass Promotional Marketing (asi/141964) – Fred Parker, president
  • Goldner Associates Inc (asi/209800) – Jeneen Preciose, vice president
  • Keltner & Associates (asi/240725) – Jim Price, president
  • ePromos (asi/188515) – Jason Robbins, president
  • Proforma (asi/300094) – Brian Smith, president and chief operating officer
  • Sanford Business-to-Business (asi/84833) – Bob Stoltz, president
  • Goldner Associates Inc (asi/209800) – Andy Straus, assistant vice president
  • Blue Sky Marketing Group (asi/141930) – Steve Tazic, chief information officer
  • WearGuard, an ARAMARK Company (asi/356061) – Guy Tunnicliffe, director, promotional products division

Advisory board members say they are optimistic about creating a strategic roadmap for next steps in the product’s progression and adoption. 

Bob Stoltz, president of Sanford Business-to-Business, said:  “Once an initial order is placed, distributors and suppliers use ASItransact to progress step-by-step through the digital artwork approval process, proofing stages and can then track the final product shipment.  One of the goals of the advisory board is to figure out how even more administrative tasks can be reduced in this online environment, so that sales staffs can spend more time selling and less time managing orders.”   

Guy Tunnicliffe, director of promotional products division for WearGuard, commented:  “We’ve researched lots of products and look forward to providing insights to help ASItransact continue improving order processing workflows.  Both distributors and suppliers win with this system, because its Web-based capabilities allow more orders to be fulfilled faster, speeding delivery of products to the end-buyer.”

ASI has several volunteer advisory boards for its products and services and finds the insights and feedback from members valuable.

Dale Denham, senior vice president of ASI, noted:  “The ASItransact advisory board has already been instrumental in making strategic decisions, like changing our pricing model to unlimited usage for only $299.  They’ve also guided our direction in making our software standards available to the industry at no charge, even to competitors.  I’m especially excited about the knowledge of these board members and what insights they can share to continue increasing adoption of ASItransact.”

To learn more about the ASItransact advisory board or how ASItransact can improve operations for your promotional products business, contact Gene Rahill, sales manager for ASItransact at ASI, at 800-546-1350, ext. 3848, or at [email protected]

About ASI
Advertising Specialty Institute is the largest media organization serving the promotional products industry, with a membership of 21,000 distributor firms (sellers) and supplier firms (manufacturers) of promotional products.  Supplier firms use ASI print and electronic resources to market products to more than 18,000 ASI distributor firms.  Distributor firms use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 700,000 promotional products, to locate supplier firms and to market services to buyers.  ASI provides catalogs, informational directories, newsletters, magazines, Websites and databases, and offers interactive e-commerce, marketing and selling tools. Visit www.uat-asicentral.com.