To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 11.1.0 or greater is installed.
Entrepreneur
BRANDING IMPACT
Equal parts financial analyst and tactical trend-watcher, Chris Ferriter and the team at SoBe
Promos are putting a sizzling spin on the idea of Miami-based business.
TEX T BY RYAN JARRELL
T he bearer of a tastefully tussled coiffe and the carefree
manner so pejoratively applied to all of his generation,
30-year old Chris Ferriter, upon first glance, could
perhaps be mistaken for a simple sales rep at his own
concern. A moment’s conversation, however, reveals a
stark and unavoidable truth — this millennial maverick of
marketing and finance, far from being the recipient of trust
fund financing and pure, dumb luck, has, with the help of
similarly aged partners CFO Scott Latimer and CEO Steven
Kramer, reinvented and reinvigorated a massive market.
As the VP of Business Development at promotional products
provider SoBe Promos, Ferriter has personally witnessed
powerful success in bridging that perilous gap in the business
sphere, upscaling a start-up from dream to full-blown
competitor. Scarcely 4 years old, SoBe Promos has catapulted,
achieving a staggering 1,050% in sales growth since their
inception, netting almost $4 million in 2016 sales alone (up
from a modest, if acceptable, $682,000 in 2014). To what does
Ferriter elect as the key to his success? A modish mixture
of financial savvy, new technology utilization, old-school
mercantile mentorship (CEO Kramer’s father is none other
than Jeff Kramer, CEO of groundbreaking promo provider
Bullet Line), and speed, baby, speed. “One of the fun things we
like to do with new sales people is take them out to trade shows
and tell them to not just look at the products, but to look at
our competitors. It’s a very antiquated industry,” says Ferriter.
“It really needed a jolt of youth. A younger generation is used
to getting things very quickly and we work very fast as a
70 result. I think the industry standard is like a 24-hour response
time, but we can throw mock-ups back at potential clients in a
matter of minutes.”
No stranger to the whip-crack pace of capital, Ferriter cut his
financial accounting teeth in no less an intimidating industry
as defense, honing his presentation and spreadsheet skills at a
roughly $31 billion market, before taking a leap of faith and
allying with fellow UM graduates Latimer and Kramer. It’s
that measure of open-mindedness and adaptability, Ferriter
believes, that is required to survive and thrive in the modern
marketplace. “You gotta move fast,” he says, underlining again
and again the importance of efficiency when satisfying a
clientele increasingly expectant of instantaneous satisfaction.
“You have to be able to shift gears on a dime, and alter your path
very quickly. Things change quickly, especially here in Miami,
so you can’t afford to get locked into one mode.”
Perhaps most surprising of all, the aspect that Ferriter
suggests most strongly for the aspiring entrepreneur is to
stop being so imaginative. “I think a lot of the time people
think a startup has to be some crazy new idea no one has
ever thought of before, it has to be something no one’s ever
conceived. And I think that’s a broken idea,” he says. “SoBe
Promos isn’t anything like a crazy, unique business. We sell
promotional products. There are hundreds of thousands of
competitors in our market. Instead of reinventing the wheel,
we focused on amping up our quality standards and doing
things better than our competitors. And I think it’s worked
out pretty well so far!”; SoBePromos.com.