The Bravo Supplier Award debuted last year to honor the direct selling industry’s most valued, supportive and uplifting partners whose contributions favorably impact the channel’s growth. This year’s recipient is Exigo, whose launch by co-founders Peter Zielke, David Thompson and Ed Jarrin in 2000, established an industry partnership that continues to meet the ever-changing technology needs within an ever-evolving channel.
Exigo immediately caught traction in the direct selling industry 25 years ago, offering compensation calculation software tools that allowed direct selling companies the visibility and insight to know what was happening in their businesses and operate them on a day-to-day basis. Eventually, they added analytical tools that allowed companies to dig deeper and understand how they could most effectively move the needle.
“Our goal at Exigo is to empower direct selling companies with real-time data, robust analytics and a really great user experience,” CEO Gary Fitzgerald said.
The Pride of Partnership
Rather than build out huge tech teams on their own, direct selling companies of all sizes partner with Exigo and its technology professionals to take care of technical pieces of the business. That frees up direct sellers to do what they do best—sell products.
Exigo’s client base stretches into 130 markets across the globe with hundreds of customers ranging from those just starting out to companies in the billions of dollars. Gary explained that makes for a really challenging environment because every country has slightly different rules.
“One of the things that we bring to bear is hundreds of years of collective experience and understanding the challenges our customers are going through. Operating in Asia looks very different than operating in Europe, which looks very different than operating in the United States. We are providing one platform that allows them to do all those things,” he said. “But it’s tricky, and there’s a lot of complexity in each and every one of those implementations.”
Providing Powerful Solutions
Customer need drives everything at Exigo. When Gary came on board at the end of 2023, customer conversations pointed out areas of struggle and opportunity. Exigo continues to evolve their platform and offerings to answer their customers’ concerns, currently leaning into ecommerce, field enablement, mobile applications and different ways to help direct selling companies drive more revenue to the business.
For instance, it’s incredibly important for companies to give their field organizations real-time information when people are engaged and trying to sell products. Field representatives have questions. How much product have I sold? What’s my compensation? How many more sales do I need to get to reach that next level to bump up my pay? This is significant and meaningful for the field and the companies, too. Exigo does everything they can from a tech standpoint to provide that real-time information to the benefit of both field and company.
“It’s embedded in the partnership, an understanding of where they are struggling and where they’ve got opportunities. Everything that we do is really based on what our customer needs are. It’s very clear right now that we’re on a precipice with AI and deeper engagement and decision analytics. So, that’s what we’re leaning into. More than anything the direct selling community right now needs help driving revenue,” Gary shared.
On the heels of launching a new ecommerce product comes the introduction of a mobile application. Gary shared, “We are going to build AI tools on the back of all of our products to create one fully integrated ecosystem. So rather than requiring our customers to go to multiple places to do things, it’s just one-stop shopping, where we get them all of the commissions and back-office stuff we’ve been known for, for over 20 years, but now really giving them end-to-end solutions that are fully integrated.”
“The coolest part of our business is when we implement our technology and we see some companies that start out really small, and then see them scale up and begin to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of product and really grow in the industry to become experts and leaders. From that perspective, we take a lot of pride in helping our customers navigate those challenges; the new business models that are constantly evolving and changing; or the expansion of global markets—all those things are really fun to watch and gratifying to be a part of in meaningful ways.”
On behalf of the industry at large, DSN would like to congratulate and thank Gary and the entire Exigo team for their significant and ongoing contributions to the direct selling channel.
From the May/June 2025 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
