At Hasseman Marketing, we are proud of our community. And we are proud that Coshocton County is the birthplace of the Promotional Products Industry. It’s true. The birthplace of the $25 billion industry starts with an entrepreneur from Coshocton named Jasper Meek.
“Jasper Freemont Meek was one of the earliest significant contributors to this budding industry. He owned a small newspaper in Coshocton, Ohio, and like many other small newspaper owners of the time, he supplemented his revenue by taking on job printing, which used his printing press between editions.
Seeing a child drop her schoolbooks in the dirt on Main Street spurred Meek to approach his friend, Mr. Cantwell, owner of Cantwell Shoes, with an idea about building store traffic, name recognition and ultimately increasing sales. Meek’s idea was to imprint a burlap book bag with a simple but direct advertising message, “Buy Cantwell Shoes.” Cantwell would give every child who came into his shoe store a free bag. The children would carry the bag as they walked to and from school so Cantwell’s name would be seen all over town. Mr. Meek manufactured the book bag, imprinted the advertising slogan on his printing press, and both Meek and Cantwell reaped the rewards.”
From here, the industry took off. Competitors popped up and built upon the success of each other. And soon, Coshocton became a hot bed of artists, Coca-cola trays and calendars. Jeff Shaw talks about that history in this video.
The words Coshocton and Calendars went together.
Over time, some of the calendar business left Coshocton County. Back in 2004, then JII Promotions outsourced their calendar manufacturing to Norwood in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. And in 2018, Elliott Calendar company sold most of it’s calendar manufacturing to Drum-line. Beach Company, which has roots back to the beginning of the industry, still produces calendars today.
We are excited to carry on that proud calendar tradition.
At Hasseman Marketing, we have started to produce a limited number of custom calendar options…and the response has been tremendous. The three styles we are currently offering are the 12 Month Appointment calendar, the Year at A Glance calendar and the Custom Planner calendar. All of these can be found here. And because we believe that calendars are still foundational for great marketing, more styles will be explored soon.
We are proud to join this rich history of promotional products in Coshocton County. We look forward to producing calendars here in Coshocton for years to come. If you are interested in chatting about creating a custom calendar for your organization, let’s talk!
