Jack Gimpel

What inspired you to start Aero?

Everything really came together while I was working in print sales at The Hennegan Company, which at the time was one of the top printing companies in the country. I loved the work and did very well there, but I kept running into the same issue: once the printing was done, there really weren't any serious fulfillment companies in Cincinnati to handle what came next. Most of the local options were essentially direct-mail houses doing a little fulfillment on the side, and they simply weren't delivering the level of service customers needed.

It was so bad that one of my clients at Hennegan, U.S. Shoe, was literally managing his inventory on a yellow legal pad.

I've always been an entrepreneur at heart with a desire to build a business of my own, and I could clearly see the gap. Companies needed something better after the printing was done — someone who could properly manage inventory and make sure materials actually got where they needed to go.

So I came up with a solution that involved warehousing, picking, packing, and shipping advertising materials, products, and direct marketing pieces. I pitched the idea to U.S. Shoe, and they were willing to come on board as the first client.

Where did the name "Aero" come from?

When I was starting the company, there was really only one serious fulfillment player in Cincinnati at the time — a company called Amity.

In those days people still relied heavily on the phone book to find vendors. So I knew one thing for sure — we needed to be ahead of Amity in the phone book. That's how the name Aero came about. Starting with "AE" put us ahead of Amity alphabetically.

What were the early days of Aero like?

In the early days, Aero really felt like the Wild West.

At the time I was still working at Hennegan, so I hired an operations person to run the day-to-day activities while I kept my job and helped get the business off the ground. We started out as Aero Mailing and Fulfillment with a small crew — maybe six to eight people — in about 10,000 square feet on Creek Road in Blue Ash. At that point we basically had one major client: U.S. Shoe. Most of what we did for them was a mix of direct mail and fulfillment, especially all the in-store promotions for their shoe brands.

It was hands-on, scrappy work. Everyone wore multiple hats, and we were figuring things out as we went. From the outside it probably looked a little chaotic — small team, growing fast, learning on the fly — but it was exciting.

What values did you want Aero to be built on?

From the beginning, two things mattered most to me: taking great care of customers and giving them real visibility into their business.

So the goal was simple: make the experience easy for our clients and give them the information they needed to run their business well. That meant strong customer service, clear communication, and systems — not yellow legal pads — that provided real data.

What's something about you that people would be surprised to learn?

Most people know me as a sales guy and the founder of a fulfillment company, but what usually surprises them is that I'm actually an artist at heart.

I went to the University of Cincinnati's DAAP program and studied industrial design. My senior thesis was a project called Music in Motion. I built a system where a slide projector sent light through a shutter attached to a vibrating speaker. The vibration created a strobe effect across a series of colorful motorized disks, so the light appeared to dance to the frequency of the music. It was really an experiment in how motion, light, and signals interact.

My first job out of school was at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis designing packaging. I'm a very visual, hands-on person, and for a while I thought that's what my whole career would be.