When Millie Tadewaldt founded Brilliant (asi/146116) 10 years ago, she knew she would be doing things differently.

In her time in venture capital and business consulting, the Harvard Law graduate was struck by two extremes when buying promo.

“I was blown away by the outsized emotional impact that the right product can have,” she says. “At the same time, I was dismayed by the outdated purchasing process.”

While she could easily purchase shoes online, for example, buying promo meant meeting with a sales rep lugging a suitcase who, after the call, wouldn’t let her keep samples. “Even after meeting with someone, I wasn’t fully confident that I was going to get what I wanted, so it was a leap of faith,” she says. “There was this conflict in my mind – I knew promo was worth purchasing, but I also felt bad buying it.”

So when Tadewaldt first decided to open her own company, she offered curated, blank one-off corporate gifts. She built a website where customers entered key information, like the occasion, recipient details and budget, to generate three recommendations. “It was me coming up with those ideas,” says Tadewaldt. “Then clients started asking about adding logos and it was an ‘aha’ moment. So I pivoted and we became a distributor instead of just an e-commerce company, and we were doing 200 items with a logo instead of one blank item.”

In essence, Tadewaldt now offered the handpicked gift experience to promo end-buyers. She started with her network she’d built over time – mostly tech customers – and cast an ever-wider net. While targeted verticals have evolved, the mission hasn’t.

“We focus on good design and elevating these products,” she says. “We’d rather sell someone nothing than something they’re going to throw away. We tell our people to question everything and dig into the reason why. Doing what clients ask is easy. Long-term, you have to think with them.”

“I was blown away by the outsized emotional impact that the right promo product can have.”Millie Tadewaldt, Brilliant (asi/146116)

Not long after Tadewaldt opened Brilliant’s doors, Cristina Ysselstein, now the Bay Area territory manager for Counselor Top 40 supplier SanMar (asi/84863), sat down for a coffee with her. “Millie was calm, focused and unfazed by the typical challenges of launching something new,” she says. “She had already thought through the hard parts and came ready with solutions. It was clear that she was uniquely prepared, with a sharp vision and a well-developed plan.”

Now, Brilliant has 140 people in the U.S., Canada and the Philippines who work with some of the world’s biggest brands – like Google, Reddit and OpenAI. None of them are referred to as a “sales rep.”

“We call them ‘creative partners,’” she says. “We want to focus on great customer service, which means clients work with someone who’s smart, thoughtful and empathetic. It’s someone clients can go to whose name they know and have built a relationship of trust with. We want to build a culture of customer service and creativity, not just sales. The reason why people stay with Brilliant, they say, is the relationship they have with their creative partner, their trusted ally.”

Brilliant (asi/146116) Founder Millie Tadewaldt joined ASI Media’s Promo Insiders last year to discuss her and her company’s approach to Q4 gifting

Those relationships have yielded ultra-creative, high-end results, including a project with Uber that won a Counselor 2023 Promo Campaign Award for Best Distributor Client Promotion.

Another creative endeavor? Recently, Tommy Gomez, senior director of creative strategy at Brilliant and ASI Media’s 2023 Distributor Up-and-Comer of the Year, designed the Brilliant Grocer, a Miami-based pop-up “grocery store” with curated self-promos for Brilliant. Tadewaldt says it’s her favorite recent campaign they’ve done.

“At first I didn’t get it,” says Tadewaldt, “but I’ve known Tommy long enough and I trust him. And as it came together, it did start to make sense and it was a moment of pride for me – to watch someone grow up with the company and then let them loose to have more success than I’ve had in that space. It’s been hard for me to let go of the white-knuckle grip I’ve had on things, but I’m making myself do it, and it’s been a delightful evolution.”

Tadewaldt’s ambition, combined with healthy doses of pragmatism and ingenuity, hasn’t gone unnoticed – last fall, Boston-based New Heritage Capital made a private equity investment in the distributorship, which gives Tadewaldt’s team the flexibility to continue to manage the company while leveraging New Heritage Capital’s “Private IPO” solution that will power ongoing company expansion.

Says Ysselstein: “I’ve loved watching Millie bring her vision to life with an incredible team, leading technology, and purposeful, intentional growth.”