In early 2021, Irwin Goldstein leaned back at his desk and watched a thing of beauty: drop-ship orders flowing seamlessly through the dashboard for Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000). It was one of the crowning achievements of the long slog he and his team labored through to launch a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The previous one had been in use for more than 20 years.

“It’s very rare that an ERP is on time, on budget and everything else,” says Goldstein, VP of enterprise and solution architecture for HALO. “The ERP projects are notorious. The joke is that it really stands for Early Retirement Planning.”

Luckily, he says, “we at least did well enough that it didn’t mean my early retirement.”

Instead, the system – and Goldstein – contributed to a major achievement for HALO: the distributor reaching $1 billion in sales in 2022.

“Irwin’s invaluable contributions have been instrumental in shaping our technology road map and empowering our account executives at HALO with the tools they need to grow their business,” says Amit Gaur, SVP and chief information officer at HALO.

Goldstein’s work getting to this point is a huge step away from his original plans to do pre-med. At the time, working with computers was just a hobby for him – a passion he’s had since childhood. When he went to college, he took a part-time job at a computer store. “I very quickly learned I loved what I was doing at the computer store and kind of hated biology,” Goldstein says.

“Change is what I love about working in technology. There’s always something new to learn and apply.”– Irwin Goldstein, HALO

So, he quit pre-med and instead earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Loyola University of Chicago and a master’s in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1985. After college, Goldstein was hired as the very first IT person at London House, a small company publishing psychological tests at the time. He stayed for 14 years, working his way up to Director of IT, and then left to be a consultant – where he had HALO as a client. He began working with HALO in 1997 and never looked back.

There are many complexities to Goldstein’s work. For example, programs for big clients can be tricky, since they typically have strict demands in terms of what kind of technology is allowed in their environments. He and his team have had to step up their game in a number of ways, including obtaining ISO and SOC-2 certification. “We have to prove that we have good protection of personal identification information,” he says.

Goldstein’s influence extends beyond HALO. Jon Norris, the COO of Top 40 supplier Starline (asi/89320), calls Goldstein “the OG of integration technology in this industry.”

“He was trying to solve this problem before the industry knew it was a problem,” says Norris, who was Counselor’s 2019 Technology Executive of the Year. “Much of the collaboration happening in promo’s technology space comes from Irwin’s early days working with his competitors to try to streamline communication in the industry.”

Goldstein brushes off a chance to brag about his own accomplishments and instead spreads the wealth with other members of the team. “I’m just grateful and thankful,” he says, “for working with such a wonderful team of people. They’re responsible for my success as much as anybody.”

He acknowledges that there’s still fun things happening after 25 years at the company because technology is ever-evolving – including the latest innovation of generative AI and ChatGPT. Goldstein says HALO has been experimenting with the software, including automating some tasks “that we used to consider impossible to automate,” he says. The use his team has in mind right now is fairly narrow, but he says the possibilities are extraordinary.

“I think any IT professional should be paying close attention to what’s happening with AI,” he says. “Like many developments I’ve seen throughout my career, this will change the way we do our jobs. Change is what I love about working in technology. There’s always something new to learn and apply.”