Here, Lederer provides some insight about himself and the industry.
Print+Promo (P+P): What principles did you use to build the business?
Bob Lederer (BL): To build the business appropriately, we concentrated on providing great service because the products that we had were not so unusual that people couldn't get something similar from another company. ... People started gravitating toward us, knowing that they were going to get good service, but the creativity of the product also was important. In the early '90s, we came out with a lot of new products. By this time, I was on the board of directors of PPAI, and at one of the meetings, Ted Olson, the president of PPAI at the time, gave each of us a stress ball and I thought, "Gee, that's a cute item." It wasn't in the industry as far as I knew, and I sourced it when I got back home and I said to my staff here that I thought we had a winner with this stress ball. I showed 11 people the ball—and all 11 turned it down and thought it was a dog, so I decided to try a small quantity. We started with about 10,000 of the globe stress balls and the plain stress balls. Within a matter of days, it was an instant hit so we actually built the line on new products. ... There were a few other people who had dabbled in it, but we came out with it in strength.