Koozie Group CEO Pierre Montaubin on Sustainability, Sourcing, and Beyond

By Brendan Menapace

Pierre Montaubin

Yesterday, Koozie Group, Clearwater, FL, announced that Pierre Montaubin has succeeded David Klatt as the company's new CEO. Montaubin previously served as Koozie Group's first Chief Product and Sustainability Officer since January. Before that, his history with the company included leading its Hong Kong-based sourcing efforts.

We caught up with Montaubin to discuss his new role as CEO, how his sourcing background would influence his work as CEO, the role sustainability plays in Koozie Group's present and future, and more.

Print & Promo Marketing: First of all, congratulations! How does it feel taking this new position at Koozie Group?

Pierre Montaubin: Thanks, Brendan. I feel both proud and excited. I've been around for quite a while, first doing sourcing for the company in 2009 when BIC Graphic combined with Norwood. I fell into promo at that time. Then in 2017, when BIC Graphic was bought by H.I.G. Capital, I had the choice of going back to France and continuing my career with BIC or continuing the adventure in promo and moving stateside. The rest is history. I moved here with my family. So, to come back to your question, super proud and super excited about what the future holds. I think we have, to use a sports analogy, the right people on the pitch. I'm a big soccer fan.

So am I, so you're speaking my language.

Very excited. There’s a great executive team around me, and across the entire organization.

You mentioned this sourcing background. How do you think that will influence you in your new position as CEO?

It's very important. Sourcing in our industry is one of the cornerstones because a lot of the innovation is driven mainly by Chinese manufacturers, as you know. So, we are all working with the same suppliers. If you think about our competitors, it's a small family. We're all dealing with the same companies, looking at the same products, and it's very important to have strong relationships with the right partners. ... I think it's a real demand from our customer base to have a transparent supply chain. So, this background helps us as a company to evolve best practices as it relates to purchasing and supply chain for better transparency. It's part of our journey. So, our Fair Labor Association accreditation is probably going to take us another two-and-a-half to three years. But we’re working to get there. That's our North Star from a compliance and sustainability perspective.

To that sustainability point, you've obviously been involved on a sustainability level at Koozie Group being the Chief Product and Sustainability Officer. What role does sustainability, especially the environmental-friendliness, have with Koozie Group going forward? What's your plan to move that needle?

Great question. It's another cornerstone of our strategy. Three things that are very important to us are to deliver excellent service, great products, and on-time solutions every time. So, when we say "solutions," it's technology, it's brands and products, it's service. The second pillar is sustainability and compliance. We were one of the first who started with compliance back in the day because we wanted our customers to be protected. For instance, we were one of the first, to have a phthalates-free catalog back in 2016. It took a very, very long time. When we started to talk about phthalates and Prop 65 to our suppliers back in 2011, they looked at me like I was an alien. They said, "Why are you going to do that? It's completely silly. The price of your products is going to go higher." So, I told them 'No, this is core to our business, and this is what we want to do because we know our customers are going to ask for it. Some have already started asking for it.’

Our suppliers didn't want to commit, so what we did was join them at the mills, mainly polyester mills, and we bought phthalate-free fabric, stored it in their warehouses, and asked them to produce the bags for us. That is how it all started. So, on this one, we were right. The evolution shows that everybody did embark on the same strategy and went phthalate-free and so on.

So, to come back to the core of your question, sustainability is super-important. The Keep It. Give It. Report that we publish now every year is the cornerstone of our strategy from that aspect. We published for the first time our greenhouse gas emissions in the last report. We are going to be carbon neutral by 2024 on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and we are starting to measure Scope 3 emissions, which is the biggest deal from an EPA perspective.

You have more and more distributors asking for this type of product because they receive inquiries from their end-users. They receive inquiries from large corporations. Rightfully so, because you cannot say, if you are a Delta [Airlines], for instance, or a L'Oreal, or another Fortune 500 company, you cannot say to the market, to all of your consumers, that you want to be carbon-neutral by 2030 or 2025, pick your date, and give your employees, to your prospective consumers, single-use plastic products. That's on the line. You have a message on one side that is, "I want to be carbon-neutral. I want to do what's right for the planet," and on the other side I'm giving away stuff that is going to end up in a landfill next week?

We rely on our distributors to pass this message along to their end users, and this is on us to help educate them. There are distributors who do that very, very well, and there are distributors that we want to partner with to create that demand and dialogue with their own customers.

What do you see as the biggest challenge and biggest opportunity for Koozie Group in the near future?

Well, I would say the challenge is to adapt ourselves to our distributors' and consumers' behavior. It's where you position yourself from a products perspective and a pricing perspective, to answer that demand. I think another challenge will be technology. Nobody wants to re-key the same information again and again, so how can we bring the tools and the services to our distributors that will help them do business with us efficiently?

We are here to help our distributors grow, and we want to grow with them. This is a great opportunity for us. I think, again, we have the right people on the pitch. We've been through a few rough years. The customer experience was not where it needed to be. We worked on this, and for the last six to nine months, we're back on track — delivering excellent service at all customer touchpoints. So, I think consistency is key. You overcome the challenge by being consistent, and showing day-in and day-out that you can deliver on time the service and the products that our customers want.

Again, congratulations, Pierre. Finally, the most important question. What's the soccer team do you support?

I was born in Marseille. I'm an Olympique de Marseille fan. It's in my blood. Even if you don't like soccer, if you were born in Marseille, you have to support the local soccer team.