Executive Perspectives: How Greater Pacific CEO Ben Zhang's Past Informs His Present in Business

As part of Print+Promo Marketing’s ongoing feature, Executive Perspectives, we get to know leading professionals in the print and promotional industry. This month, we interviewed Ben Zhang, founder and CEO of Greater Pacific, Seattle. Here, he traces the journey that shaped his goal-setting process, expresses his industry concerns, and reveals an exciting investment.

How did you get started in this industry, and what path did you take to land in your current role?

Ben Zhang, CEO, Greater Pacific

Ben Zhang: I founded Greater Pacific from ground zero while I was still a senior at the University of Washington in 1995. At the time, I did not know anything about the promotional product industry. I learned about it from attending a regional gift show in Seattle in 1996. [At this trade show,] I also met our first distributor customer, who supplied promotional products to a large end-user customer (then called WaMu). Now, 28 years have passed and we have weathered many recessions, a global pandemic, supply chain challenges, and other challenges. I’m happy to say we are a top 40 supplier in our advertising specialty industry, and have three sales offices (Issaquah headquarters, Philadelphia, and San Diego) and a support office in Shanghai, China.

How do you set goals for yourself? For your business?

BZ: I was born and raised in China during the culture revolution. I escaped during the Tiananmen Square student protests to the U.S. in the summer of 1989. To keep my student status valid, I had to stay in school full time. Therefore, I needed to work and earn a living to fund my tuition. I spent the first six years of my American life in college and living with American families to adapt to the culture and master English. In 1995, I finally graduated from the UW with my bachelor’s degree. Shortly after, I was able to naturalize my citizenship, benefiting from President [George H.W.] Bush’s Chinese Student Protection Act [of 1992]. In 2007, I returned to school to obtain my MBA from Cornell. In 2009, I furthered my education by enrolling in the OPM from Harvard Business School. From there, I learned a great deal about giving back to the community and helping others to succeed.

For business ... we’ve set a revenue goal of $100 million. In 2020, Greater Pacific reached $70 million thanks to a great job in “pivoting” to selling PPE products. We still have a long way to go to hit $100 million, but I’m building a stronger team and putting together processes to get there.

What do you expect to be some of the biggest changes or challenges the industry will face?

BZ: The current state of US-CN relations is certainly concerning. There is much anti-China sentiment since the start of COVID, [so] we shifted some of our supply chain to Vietnam, Cambodia, India, and other countries. Unfortunately, these countries do not offer the same efficiencies, manufacturing resources, and public infrastructure to meet our time-sensitive, event-driven needs. Finding reliable, quality vendors in these countries is challenging.

What keeps you up at night?

BZ: The slow economy results in lower demand for promotional products. Overall, the industry has not grown much in the last eight to 10 years. In addition to more price competition, often promotional spending is the first thing to be cut when the economy is tough.

What do you think is the most exciting, cutting-edge thing your company is doing right now?

BZ: ERP! After 28 years, we finally decided to buy an ERP system to help streamline our operations and to go paperless. This requires hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment. But in the end, we believe it will pay off in better internal and external communication, better customer service, and higher efficiencies. Our business will run smoother and be nimbler.

What would people be surprised to learn about you?

BZ: My wife and children say I am a workaholic CEO. Both of my children are in college now. My wife and I are the empty nesters at home. On the weekends, we have time on our hands. I’m trying to convince her to play golf again. She played golf in college in Japan and taught me how to play golf about 25 years ago. She stopped golfing after she delivered our first child in 2001. We both have passions for golf. I currently carry a 6 handicap index, and have had four hole-in-ones so far. Fore!

Want to be considered for a future edition of Executive Perspectives? Contact Elise Hacking Carr at ecarr@napco.com for a list of questions and other details.