Janson spoke recently with DC VELOCITY Group EditorialDirector Mitch Mac Donald about his long, strange careertrip; the “Amazonization” of supply chain; and what thefuture holds for logistics.
QTell us about SanMar and your role there as head of logistics operations.
ASanMar is a privately held company based in Seattle, Washington. We arethe nation’s largest wholesale distributor ofapparel to the “imprinting”—meaning custom printing and embroidering—industry.Essentially, we sell the blank canvas that isthen decorated by one of our 75,000 customers in the U.S. and sold as uniforms or“fan wear.” I always tell people that SanMaris probably the largest small company you’venever heard of and that I can almost guarantee you have some of our products hangingin your closet. If you have something frommakers like Port Authority, Sport-Tek, Port & Co., RedHouse, and so forth, you have something from SanMar.
It’s always interesting to see where our products end up.
We recently had that chance when the 49ers pulled on their
championship gear after winning the National Football
Conference (NFC) Championship Game in January. Those
hats and shirts were provided by [the online sportswear
retailer] Fanatics, and we provided the blank canvas for
Fanatics, meaning that we actually delivered the T-shirts
and baseball caps that went to the NFC champions. That’s
the more flashy side of the business.
To support the business from the logistics side, we sourcematerials for manufacturing from 22 different countriesaround the world. We have 10 domestic DCs, so we canbasically provide the product to most of our customerswithin a one-, or at most, two-day transittime. It is a pretty complex operation for alittle T-shirt company.
Q What are your team’s responsibilities?A I have a 20-person team. We are respon- sible for managing all of the global logistics activities at SanMar. We are responsiblefor getting product from manufacturing sitesin 22 countries through our cross-dock operations and all of our distribution points,and then delivering it to our end-of-the-linecustomers.
QTell us about your career journey. How did you come to hold your current position?ABack when I graduated from college, it wasn’t like today—where people are actually going and gettingdegrees in supply chain and logistics, and targeting thisindustry for its career opportunities. I graduated from BoiseState University in 1983, and the job market was kind oftough at the time. I got hired by a truckload carrier that was
