If schoolteachers in the mid-1970s were properly compensated, promo might never have seen the likes of Dave DeGreeff, MAS. The industry would be worse off for it.
In such a world, the community wouldn’t have been the beneficiary of years of DeGreeff’s business leadership, volunteerism and advocacy.
Indeed, 2024’s PPAI Hall of Fame inductee has touched every side of the promo industry. But his earlier ambitions were tied to his first passion. DeGreeff and his wife were both teachers in the town of Washington, Missouri, delighted by the process of helping young children establish their footing in this world. But the prospect of having their own children was hamstrung by their modest salaries.
Luckily, the small town of Washington had a disproportionately large promo presence at the time. A few of his friends worked for Hazel, a supplier of vinyl and leather products, which happened to have a sales position for him.
That was the beginning of DeGreeff’s Hall of Fame career in promotional products. He never lost the passion for teaching. Still, even if promo was something of an alternative route, what he accomplished is worthy of being honored at The PPAI Expo 2024.
The ‘Priest Of The Promotional Products Industry’
It didn’t start off smoothly.
Bill Wood, then the sales manager of Hazel, took DeGreeff to Michigan for a sales trip. DeGreeff’s job was to cover Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, so this trip was to be something of a test run.
After about a day and a half, Wood called back to Hazel headquarters to declare that he didn’t believe his young colleague was going to make it in this industry.
Perhaps he needed a little more time to adjust to the new career, or perhaps he just needed to go out and develop his relationships out from under the watchful eye of Wood, but soon DeGreeff was thriving, not to mention learning about the business.
“I worked for [Hazel] for four years, and it was the best training that anyone could possibly get,” he says.
The supplier required that DeGreeff spend some time in the factory to work in production and silk screening and embossing to learn all the different things that went into making their products. It set a standard for product knowledge that would greatly help him over the course of his career.
The only problem was that the salary he received as a regional sales manager was still relatively small, all things considered.
In 1982, at age 30 and with one child, DeGreeff developed a plan. It would be a risk. He scouted out Texas as the place where he could make strides as a multi-line rep. He told Hazel that he was leaving the company and departed for a trade show in St. Louis. When he arrived at the show, he had no companies officially lined up to rep for his new venture. But he was no stranger.
“By the time I was finished with that week, I had five lines to rep and was ecstatic that I had enough to actually get started,” DeGreeff says.
Maybe the scariest part was over, but the real work was about to begin. Over the next couple decades, DeGreeff would thrive as a multi-line rep.
“One thing I was proud of was how hard I worked,” DeGreeff says. “Suppliers said they wouldn’t even have to look at my itinerary. They knew where I’d been based on where the calls were coming from asking for samples and orders.”
In a pre-online landscape, being a multi-line rep required a certain deftness and ability to not only maintain relationships but continue to form them. DeGreeff was a mainstay of late nights on the road, entertaining clients and supplier partners over drinks.
“I always thought of myself as the priest of the promotional products industry,” DeGreeff says. “I worked with suppliers, and distributors were our customers. They would both tell me everything about their business and their personal lives.”
These peers would tell him their secrets in confidence, much like a confessional to a priest, and that trust did not come unearned.
“Distributors could call me if they were having any issues with any of the product lines that I repped,” DeGreeff says. “A lot of supplier reps didn’t want to deal with problems. They just wanted to sell.
“I felt it was a very important part of the service I was offering to distributors.”
Sacrifices Along The Way
There’s what DeGreeff’s peers would say about his career. Leslie Roark, president of PromoPros, for example, describes it thusly:
“Dave DeGreeff is one of those people I and others see as a fixture in our industry, an icon.”
Then there’s the way his wife, Kathy, to whom he has been married for 53 years, would describe his career as a multi-line rep: He was never home.
“Those would be the words she would use,” DeGreeff says.
Indeed, during that stretch of his career, he spent about 36 weeks out of the year on the road, leaving home on Sunday evening and returning late Friday.
That’s not to say he didn’t make every effort to be a part of his son’s and daughter’s lives. When he was home, he would clock out when they finished school and squeeze in every moment with them, often going back to his office after they went to sleep to write up sample orders for the next day.
Larry D. Krause, MAS, president of LDK Marketing, recalls a regional trade show in Colorado that DeGreeff attended.
“The trade show ended at 3 p.m., but Dave had to be home in Houston for his daughter’s volleyball game the following morning,” Krause says. “So, he drove most of the night to be home in time to cheer on his daughter.”
His body, too, was making sacrifices for his work. Eventually an old back injury began to resurface. In his teenage years, partying was a regular part of DeGreeff’s life, until one day it caught up to him and he fell asleep behind the wheel on the way home from a party. The ensueing accident required 300 stitches and a month in the hospital. His hip was knocked out of place, and his knee was ripped open.
Around the age of 45, tired of the late nights and red-eyed mornings, he finally gave up drinking. But that would hardly heal him. Eventually his back could no longer handle the constant travel (he has had five back surgeries). So, in 2004, he co-founded Flagship Promotional Services, which did back-office support for distributors.
“At our peak, we had about 25 distributors that ran their business through us,” he says.
In 2011, he sold that business to AIA. In 1991, he had also co-founded The Chest, a supplier of plastic and paper products, which he sold in 2004, profiting from his hard work and positive relationships.
Continuous Volunteering
There are so many people in the promotional products industry that are part of DeGreeff’s story that listing them may be a fool’s errand.
“Anything that I have become that is good is because of all the pieces of people that have been part of me and made me who I am,” he says.
But there is one person whose relationship with DeGreeff might be emblematic of both of their characters: Peter Hirsch, who nominated DeGreeff for the Hall of Fame.
DeGreeff was one of the first people that Hirsch, president of the eponymous PPAI 100 supplier, met when he was entering the industry. Both based in Texas, they would become lifelong friends, and their most important partnerships centered around organizing hurricane relief in the Houston area over the course of multiple disasters over many years.
In an official capacity, DeGreeff volunteered countless hours to promo associations as well.
In 1985, he became president of the Houston Promotional Products Association – the first of his three terms as president. He has given his time to PPAI’s Legislative Education and Action Day (L.E.A.D.) advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill and served as the executive director of Promotional Products Association Southwest.
He served on the PPAI Board of Directors from 2011-2013 and then joined the Promotional Products Education Foundation board. In 2020, he was elected to the HPPA Hall of Fame, and in 2021 he retired after a five-year run as HPPA’s executive director.
The ways in which he has given his time to the business are stunning when you consider what was already demanded of his schedule.
“It always just felt right that I was giving back to an industry that was giving me so much,” he says.
A Full-Circle Return
The industry cannot give DeGreeff back the time that his work took from his family and the sacrifices he made for colleagues, but it can honor his service and commitment by inducting him into the PPAI Hall of Fame.
He now reconnects with his original passion while working as a substitute teacher. He has five grandchildren and is happily making up for lost time.
“The work was hard, and my body broke down after a while,” DeGreeff says. “But the people were key and what I loved about the industry.”
Auping is a news editor at PPAI.
