Brett Olson, the Vice President and General Manager, of Beacon Promotions is one of the companies original founding partners.

NEW ULM – Beacon Promotions continues their work of imprinting logos on a variety of products. They have been a promotional product supplier in New Ulm since 2003.

Brett Olsen, Vice President and General Manager, of Beacon Promotions has been with the company since the beginning as one of the original founding partners. He said, “There were eleven founding partners when we started the business, but only two remain at Beacon. However, after March and another retirement, I will be the only founding member left at the company.”

The business is located at 2121 South Bridge Street in New Ulm. Beacon works with distributors and does not do direct contact with customers or walk-ins to their location. Printwear Graphics in New Ulm is a local distributor. Those in need of a logo printed on something, they are the ones to contact.

Beacon takes companies’ logos and imprints them on a variety of products. Examples of promotional products that they work on are the Stanley mugs, Yeti products, calendars, planners, table covers for trade shows, name badges, drinkware, bags, housewares, auto accessories, writing instruments, Waterford crystal, Bose headphones, and a variety of plastic products.

Beacon has grown and expanded its business by not only working with companies in the United States, but they also ship to companies in other countries. Just to name a few, they have shipped to Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, plus Central and South America.

Beacon employees Dalton Kuck (left), Nicole Neumann (center) and Dylan Stueven (right) are ready for another days work imprinting a variety of items on a wide range of products.

When the business began, they had four production employees and only a few people in the office. Currently, they employ about 120 people with about two-thirds of them being production workers and the other one-third work in administration or in sales with their distributors.

Seven years ago, Beacon Promotions sold to HPG, who is now their parent company located in the Boston, Massachusetts’ metro area. HPG is a privately held company. Besides Beacon, HPG owns eight other companies across North America.

HPG’s company, Best Promotions, in Dallas, Texas, is getting a new facility. They are currently building a 135,000 square foot facility and it is scheduled to be open at the end of March. They work primarily on can coolers and drinkware.

“Our future goals remain the same as it has been for a while. That is that we continue to grow our business by developing more green sustainable products and to leverage our sister companies within HPG to do the same,” Olsen said.

“Our most valuable asset at Beacon Promotions continues to be our employees. We draw from our local community and also Mankato, Madelia, Fairfax, Sleepy Eye and more. We love the community and the work ethic of the people in this area,” he said.