The Gerson Companies, a family-owned design, import and distribution business, was founded in 1942 by Oscar and Antonie Gerson. From 1972 until 1997, the business was managed by sons Peter and Kurt Gerson. The third generation, John Hjalmarson and Jim Gerson, has managed the business since.
The Companies are a diversified importer/distributor of consumer products selling in all 50 states plus Canada. The products are shipped out of a distribution center located in Olathe, KS (a suburb of Kansas City), currently totaling 450,000 square feet of warehouse space. In 2001, the Companies completed the construction of a 40,500 square foot corporate headquarters building including 13,500 square feet of showroom space. We have product sourcing, quality control, and logistic offices in Hong Kong and Vietnam exclusively dedicated to supporting the success of The Gerson Companies and our retail customers.The Companies are currently comprised of three operating segments:
- Gerson Everyday imports and purchases domestically a complete line of fashion jewelry, accessories, novelties, dolls, children’s books, glass containers and vases, decorative glass marbles, gems and shapes, and river rocks. Universal SunRay (“USR”) offers a complete line of Memorial Day products with extended dating. USR also features seasonal floral decorations throughout the year.
- Gerson International (“GIL”) designs, imports and distributes a complete line of seasonal merchandise (Fall/Christmas and Spring/Summer) that is pre-booked with retailers six months in advance. Each season GIL offers more than 4,000 skus of seasonal goods at direct import pricing along with extended dating. GIL also works with many national retail accounts selling full containers of seasonal and everyday items that are shipped from Asia directly to our customers in the United States. GIL has the personnel and experience to handle all of the freight forwarding and logistics if necessary on these shipments.
- Corporate Resource Group (“CRG”) is in the specialty printing and print brokerage business, providing to corporate and other business clients (i) custom printing including business related products such as stationery, business forms and related products and related services such as bar coding, and (ii) advertising specialties such as logo imprinted merchandise advertising a client’s services or products.
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