Founded by Lou and Seth Cysewski, Coolperx emerged quickly as a leader in sustainability. As the first-ever climate-neutral, plastic-neutral brand merchandise company, they created solutions for sustainable procurement that extend into the greater retail industry. Lou and Seth are a dynamic duo combining their strengths and experience to deliver meaningful gifts with maximum positive impact. Lou's background in nursing and public health gives her incredible insight into interpersonal relationships and community dynamics. Meanwhile, Seth brought his clients and industry expertise to Coolperx.
Lou Elliott-Cysewski
In 2018, Lou saw the opportunity to leverage corporate procurement activities to solve global problems like waste, climate change, and equity. While working as the manager of multiple urgent care clinics, she grew tired of the cheap plastic tumblers with motivational imprints given to her and her dedicated team. The cheap gifts reflected a lack of caring for the providers working hard at the understaffed clinics– and they all felt it. After learning about the promotional products industry from her husband, Seth, who had been designing and procuring branded merchandise for companies for over a decade, she knew this was where she could change this and jumped in with both feet. Since then, Lou has been invited to be on the Advertising Specialties Institute board as a sustainability expert, mentors small business owners, and lead and support sustainably minded teens through Captain Planet's Planeteers program. She also contributes to Forbes and Inc to help companies find a path toward sustainability. Lou has been featured in 425 Business magazine, The Economist, and was listed as one of the Top 100 Trailblazing Entrepreneurs of 2021 by the Enterprise League.
Seth Cysewski
Seth didn’t start out with his famous and indisputable passion for sustainability. He grew up to be like most of us, living and working to support his family and his dreams. It was in the co-founding Coolperx when he became aware of the negative human impact of importing cheap products and first set on a path to solve the climate crisis. Most companies he had worked with over the years had misaligned priorities. He realized their budget-first approach created huge problems for their brand– not to mention in working conditions and never solved the problem of wasteful spending. Seth focused on sourcing more covetable products. He negotiated the first corporate North Face sale with Microsoft’s Game Studios division, which helped launch The North Face’ core profit center in corporate gifting. In 2020, he created the first embodied carbon accounting index, ClimateCost, for consumer goods categories. And, later that year, he launched the successful podcast Scaling Sustainability as a resource for scaling ESG programs, socially responsible investors, and companies. Before Coolperx, Seth invented the active wine decanting system vSpin, for which he holds two patents. He partnered with Spiegelau on the project which has been featured on NBC's The Today Show, CBS's The Talk, and was the winner of a 2016 German Design Award.