John Helder

John Helder has spent 34 years in promotional products, and his definition of the category hasn't changed: anything you can put your name on. A golf ball for an outing, a calendar for a church, the sticker on your furnace with the number to call when something goes wrong. If it carries a name, John can produce it.

What sets him apart is that clients work with one person the whole way through. John makes the first call, brings the samples, deals with the shipper when a box arrives crushed, and is still the one on the phone when the invoice comes due. No 800 number, no rotating cast.

He's watched the industry go from a yellow one-color screen print on a black shirt to full-color printing on nearly anything: pens, tumblers, dishwasher-safe decals on mugs, heat transfers on apparel. Branded apparel is his biggest seller right now, as companies trade jackets and ties for logoed shirts their teams actually wear.

John grew up in Fair Lawn, and there's a good chance you've seen him on a sideline. What began as 30 hours of community service to graduate high school, assisting his old baseball coach, turned into decades of coaching softball, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse, most of it while raising four daughters.