SBA Success Award

June 10, 1999 - Chicago IL -- Lois M. LeMenager, Chairman and CEO of Marketing Innovators, was named the recipient of the U.S. Small Business Administration's 1999 Entrepreneurial Success Award. The award recognizes individuals whose businesses were launched as a small business (by SBA standards) but have since grown into a large business. LeMenager, the only Illinois recipient of this award, will be honored at the 1999 Illinois Small Business Awards Breakfast on June 16 at Chicago's Navy Pier. 

Marketing Innovators is an incentive house and performance improvement company that works closely with clients, which include both large and small businesses, to improve employee performance and enhance customer loyalty. The Rosemont-based company was founded in 1978 with the help of a loan from the Small Business Administration. Under the leadership of LeMenager, Marketing Innovators has become one of the most respected incentive companies in the country. The company has experienced tremendous growth and development over the past 21 years, earning more than $64 million in sales revenue last year. 

Working Woman magazine recognized the company as one of the largest woman-owned businesses in America, and Crain's Chicago Business has repeatedly ranked Marketing Innovators as one of the ten largest woman-owned firms in Chicago. LeMenager has also been honored with many individual awards, including Venture Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year, The Institute of American Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, Sales and Marketing Executives of Chicago's Entrepreneurial Award, and National Association of Women Business Owners' Influential Women in Business Award.

Marketing Innovators was one of the first to use gift certificates in the business-to-business market when LeMenager created the Multiple Retailer System, a network of over 200 national, regional and local retail stores for award fulfillment. The program was considered to be the first genuinely new concept the incentive industry had seen since its inception. Today, retail gift certificates are the most popular non-monetary award option used by businesses to improve performance. In 1980, LeMenager developed the Freedom to Choose program with JCPenney. 

Out of this partnership, JCPenney Incentive Sales was formed as a full-service division of Marketing Innovators. During their 19-year relationship, LeMenager has been recognized by JCPenney with several awards, including Supplier of the Year for the JCPenney Stores. 

Lois LeMenager has been an avid supporter of numerous community-oriented projects and organizations. She has been particularly active in organizations such as Junior Achievement and Students in Free Enterprise, that allow her to positively impact the lives of young people. Her company was also one of the innovators in orchestrating an application for retail gift certificates beyond the corporate market. Through its non-for-profit Scrip fundraising program, thousands of non-for-profit associations, schools, churches and civic groups have literally raised millions of dollars in the last five years.