GLENWOOD, MN – January 29, 2019 – American Solutions for Business is proudly celebrating 20 years of their proprietary eCommerce Platform, called ACES – short for American’s Customer-Centric eCommerce Solution.
Introduced in January 2000, ASB Founder & CEO, Larry Zavadil, and Dion Harste, VP of Information Technology were set out to take advantage of the eCommerce wave they could see coming and developed the platform in a time that predated Facebook and Gmail.
Initially, ACES started as primarily an office supplies online store for the first year before introducing apparel – a plan that was sketched out on a bar napkin between Harste and Rob Dubow, owner of St. Cloud, MN-based apparel decorator. The program was named “Just in Time” (JIT) and is still one of ASB’s most robust eCommerce features, allowing customers to order branded merchandise in quantities of one (no minimums, no inventory).
Today, the platform hosts over 12,000 customer eCommerce sites. Due to ever-evolving customer needs and advances in technology, 95% of code is updated every two years, ensuring a dependable, state-of-the-art user experience. ACES has countless features that have been added over the years, including multiple eStore options, allocation dollars, approval rights, split shipping, retail-style graphics, points program, variable templates and more.
“Our ACES growth has consistently outpaced or even doubled ASB’s growth in the last seven years,” explains Mike Pfeiffer, VP of Technology. “The next adaptation of our platform will continue to power our steep growth curve for years to come. The evolution of our technology is all to help hundreds of our sales associates automate their business, increasing sales while streamlining operations.”
About American Solutions for Business
American was founded in 1981 in Glenwood, Minnesota and has evolved into a leading distributor, providing our customers with print, promotional products, marketing collateral, fulfillment and more. Despite our growth in technology, resources and sales, we maintain our grassroots attitude by operating as the only large employee-owned distributorship in the industry. This results in a team of personally-invested employees that care for our customers’ branding, spend and creative reach to help achieve their goals.
