VOORHEESVILLE – For local business owner, Jay Vandervort, the past six months have been "challenging but fun."
He has successfully started a promotional products business out of his home in Voorheesville. The company, NEXTiDEA Marketing, won an award in both May and June of this year as a "Top 20 Producer" nation-wide in the iPROMOTEu network. The award is given out monthly to the top 20 companies with the highest gross volume sales.

NEXTiDEA is an affiliate of iPROMOTEu, a network of promotional product distributors, based in Wayland, Mass., with around 280 affiliates in more than 40 states nation-wide. It was founded in 1999 by Ross Silverstein, who is the president and chief executive officer.

Vandervort started NEXTiDEA in April, 2006 with less than $5,000. He didn’t have the usual business start-up costs because iPROMOTEu provides the links to vendors.

Vandervort said that iPROMOTEu acts as an administrative support team for NEXTiDEA and its other affiliates.

Vandervort doesn’t just sell stuff, he helps his customers focus their promotional dollars, so they are not wasting their money, he told The Enterprise.
One of the reasons that he started NEXTiDEA, he said, was to "create my own schedule," and to be able to spend more time with his wife and two children.
"I am the sole employee of the company," Vandervort said.

He has three independent contractors who work for him; other than that, he is the only official employee of NEXTiDEA.

He works six days a week, he said. His days often start very early, and involve a lot of e-mail checking, text-messaging, and returning phone calls, he said.

He is usually at his home office until about 10 or 11 a.m., checking things off his to-do list for the day. He then takes off in his mobile office – his car – to go to any appointments he might have that day.

NEXTiDEA specializes in golf-tournament merchandise. Every Monday, there are at least a half-dozen golf tournaments for one charity or another, he said.

Vandervort also designs websites for companies to sell their promotional products. One of his largest customers, the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs, has a link to a merchandise store on its website that was created by Vandervort. He says it is a growing aspect of the business.

Vandervort graduated from Clarkson University in Potsdam with a degree in marketing management. The university is now one of NEXTiDEA’s customers.
"Everybody is a potential customer," he said. "Every business uses some level of promotional products." He cited examples such as refrigerator magnets, and company pens.

Those are not the only products that NEXTiDEA offers, though. Vandervort said that there are between 600,000 and a million products that he can get for a customer. On the company website, nextideamarketing.com, customers can upload their company logo, and then superimpose it onto any of the products, he said, so they can see what a coffee mug would look like with their logo, for example.
"It’s a fun business when its done right, and my goal is to always do it right, so it will always be fun," he told The Enterprise.
Vandervort’s hope for the future is "to grow my business, spend more time with my family, and do things that I want to do." And, he says, he wants to do this with a 9.5 out of 10 on a quality scale.