Growing Up Promo: Logan Hurst, Triton Promotions

Logan Hurst, President of Ontario-based distributor Triton Promotions, swore up and down he would never sell pens and tee shirts for a living. His parents started Triton Promotions in 1985, and while his dad took every opportunity to put Logan to work from the early age of four, he simply had different dreams for himself as an adult.

Logan’s father ran the company from a business development standpoint, while his mom managed the bookkeeping and accounting aspects of it all. Logan recalls always feeling the great atmosphere his parents had created, and while he has fond memories of growing up inside of the walls of the business, he wasn’t exactly thrilled to spend his weekends cleaning the stockroom with his brother while he was growing up. “Looking back on it now, I appreciate how it helped my parents in the early days, having all hands on deck at any time,” Logan shared. Speaking of an all-hands-on-deck mentality, Logan recalled a particular time where this was incredibly vital. “I remember one overseas order in the late 90’s, when working with offshore factories was more unpredictable than it is now. We had ordered 10,000 messenger bags, and they were delivered to us with the wrong logo embroidered on them.” Logan, along with his parents, brother, and additional employees who also brought in their kids to help, removed the patches thread by thread and partnered with other local businesses to re-sew the correct logo on every single one. “We had seven to eight embroiderers in our area decorating the bags to get them done and delivered in a two-week time period, and we were driving around town delivering 500 pieces here and there.” This easily could have been a nightmare of a financial loss for the company, but they were able to deliver the finished correct product to the client in time, and the client was none the wiser on what it had taken for this to happen. “The free labor definitely helped my parents with this one,” he laughed.

Logan joined the company full time in 2011 after graduating from university, and his father didn’t shy away from exposing him to the high-level meetings he was in. He introduced him to the hiring aspect of the business, and his mom taught him first and foremost that “cash flow is king,” and showed him how businesses truly stay afloat in the long run. She showed him what he should be doing, as well as what not to do, and he will tell you that he learned more about running a business through being involved in the operations of the family business over the years than he ever did in college. He and his father came to an agreement at the beginning of 2020 of how he would buy the business, which he did, although he jokes now that he might be a little behind on those payments given the global pandemic we’re all in. When asked how Triton Promotions has made it through the pandemic so far, Logan attributes the success and the ability to operate at full capacity to the ten months spent pre-COVID implementing operations to enable their employees to go fully remote, and investments made into creating more of an online presence for the company overall.

Not getting too excited before an order is delivered is one of the many key lessons Logan’s father taught him that can’t be learned from a textbook. “The PO is great, a deposit is nice, but anything can go wrong.” He also recalled the passion growing inside of him while watching orders go through the building from start to finish. In regards to when he knew he did in fact want to play a major role in Triton’s success, Logan recalled the excitement he felt when he was able to work alongside his father, as opposed to working under him. “That’s when things really shifted for me,” Logan told us. When asked about the internal perspective of taking over his parents’ business earlier this year, he shared that because he was around a lot growing up, employees truly felt that he was invested into the company’s wellbeing; although he did feel the stigma from outsiders who thought he was going to be handed things. “I didn’t want my dad fighting my battles for me,” he explained. “I wasn’t going to be taking the lead on programs until I earned it, and I was going to take that leap regardless of whether or not I was his son, because that’s just who I am.”

Logan believes in the power of promo so much that he played a part in getting his future wife into the industry. Then his girlfriend, she was working as a paralegal when he told her he knew of a supplier that was hiring. Fast forward to today, they really are keeping it in the family, as his bride, Nikki, has worked for Canadian-based supplier Debco, a part of HPG Brands, ever since.

“Our industry is fun. The EME’s, the power meetings, Vegas… it’s an industry like no other,” he shared. He also shared his thoughts on the stigma that taking over your parents’ business is something that comes easy to you. “My dad treated me rougher than anyone else,” he told us. Assuming otherwise is “peoples’ prerogative, but the people closest to us know how much effort we put into what we do for the business, and that’s more than enough for me.”