Norman Unger Cohn

Norman Cohn, a longtime Philadelphia-area business and civic leader who helped shape the multibillion-dollar promotional products industry, died at home Friday, surrounded by family. He was 93.

In Philadelphia, Mr. Cohn served on numerous boards and cultural institutions and became a familiar presence in the city’s civic and social life – from leadership roles at organizations like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Liberty Museum to widely noted charitable gatherings he and his wife Suzanne hosted in Radnor and Center City. Together, these efforts reflected the deep ties he and his family established in the region over decades.

Crowned “The Sultan of Swag” by The Wall Street Journal in a 2012 front page profile and venerated by colleagues and competitors alike for his lifelong commitment to the industry he helped transform, Mr. Cohn was chairman emeritus of the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), the Trevose-based, family-owned organization that provides media, technology, marketing and education to the suppliers and distributors who create and sell branded merchandise.

Over more than 75 years in the promotional products industry, Mr. Cohn helped usher ASI and the $27.7 billion industry from a largely analog trade into a modern era of technology and innovation, while remaining true to a principle he often championed: that at its core, branded merchandise is a relationship business. Even as the industry evolved, Mr. Cohn often said that his proudest business legacy would not be technology, trade shows or growth alone, but helping entrepreneurs succeed.

“If I’m to be remembered for anything, I’d like it to be for helping the over 20,000 distributor and supplier members grow their businesses and improve their profitability,” he once said. “I love the idea that they will be able to pass on their businesses to future generations like our family has done.”

Mr. Cohn was born in 1933 in Waterloo, Iowa to Maurice and Bess Cohn. While a senior in high school, he had a light bulb moment that changed the course of his life – and the trajectory of an entire industry. His father owned five grocery stores and his uncles had a scrap metal business. Visiting his uncles’ office, he noticed 100 cases of Smucker’s preserves that were being distributed as holiday gifts to clients and began to wonder why such items could not be sold more broadly as gift products.

That curiosity led to his first entrepreneurial effort. After learning Smucker’s already had an exclusive distributor, he began assembling food gifts with his father and offering them to local companies for employees and customers. He continued selling food gifts through college, traveling around, staying at YMCAs for $10 per week and allowing himself $1 a day for food. Mr. Cohn graduated with a BS and a BA from the University of Northern Iowa, then known as Iowa State Teachers College.

One notable sale occurred at the age of 21, when Mr. Cohn visited a company called Pillsbury Mills in Minnesota. Mr. Cohn was asked if he could provide 7,000 turkeys to give out to their employees and he agreed readily, “not knowing how I’d pay for 7,000 turkeys, how or where to keep the turkeys in cold storage until they could be delivered, or how to ship said 7,000 frozen turkeys to different locations across the country.” Mr. Cohn brought his dilemma to a local banker who took a chance on the young entrepreneur and gave him a loan to enable the deal.

As he learned more about the industry and the logoed merchandise it sold, Mr. Cohn and his father sought entry into the trade. They were first turned down by an industry association because no one was then offering food gifts. At the time, Mr. Cohn later recalled, it was “an industry that sold primarily calendars and ballpoint pens.” Rather than abandon the effort, the family joined a rival organization, began exhibiting at trade shows and built a fast-growing supplier business. By the late 1950s, the Cohn family had become the largest supplier in the industry.

Then came the move that would permanently tie the family to Philadelphia and place Mr. Cohn at the center of the industry’s future. In 1962, Norman and his father acquired ASI from Joseph Segel, founder of ASI and later QVC and The Franklin Mint, sold all of their supplier activities and moved to the Philadelphia area, where the family immersed itself full time in growing both ASI and the industry.

Mr. Cohn was named ASI’s chairman of the board in 1967 and remained active in the company throughout the rest of his life. Over the last decade he transitioned to chairman emeritus and his children, Matthew Cohn and Stephanie Cohn Schaeffer were named co-chairs, the third-generation leaders of the family business. In recent years, 10 of the 11 grandchildren have also worked or interned at ASI, extending a family legacy that Mr. Cohn helped build across decades.

His daughter Stephanie shared: “I had the privilege of working alongside my dad and learning from him every day. Whether we were at the office, a trade show, or grabbing a late-night hot dog at the ASI Show in Chicago, he made everything more fun. He believed you should wake up every day and love what you do – it shouldn’t feel like work. And with him, it never did. He always said, ‘the best is yet to come,’ and he made you believe it. I carry that forward as I continue his legacy.”

Beyond his professional success, Mr. Cohn’s true north was always his care for the people around him. His son Matthew noted: “I was incredibly blessed to work alongside my father for nearly four decades. In those years of shared challenges and triumphs, every day was a masterclass in integrity and leadership. Dad always said, ‘If you take care of your employees, your customers and your community, the business will take care of itself.’ That wasn’t just a business philosophy – it was his lived reality. He was the most generous and compassionate person I’ve ever met, with a rare gift for making everyone feel seen.”

Mr. Cohn’s lifelong empathy for others was rooted in his early upbringing and reflected in later years through an annual industry award honoring those committed to helping others through charitable measures or volunteerism. The Bess Cohn Humanitarian Award, named for the family matriarch, pays tribute to the values she instilled – kindness, generosity and a deep sense of service. That spirit was evident even in small but meaningful gestures, like the kosher mini hot dogs she introduced at an early ASI trade show to feed hungry distributors and suppliers – a tradition that continues at ASI shows to this day.

“Dad treated every person with respect; everyone who met him was the better for it,” said his daughter Debra Cohn. “He dared to dream. Devoted to his family, community, and country, he took action that made all our lives better with generosity, wisdom and joy. I was privileged to be his daughter.”

Mr. Cohn’s commitment to leadership began early. As a rising high school senior, he was elected Governor of the American Legion’s Boys State and selected as one of only two representatives from Iowa to attend American Legion Boys Nation, where he was elected Secretary of Defense, an honor that led to an invitation to meet President Harry S. Truman at the White House.

From there, Mr. Cohn embarked on a lifetime of global civic engagement. In 1960, at just 27 years old, Mr. Cohn became the youngest member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). He played an active role for decades, including service on the YPO International Board as Education Chair and Marketing Chair. During YPO’s first-ever Trip Around the World, he met his “beautiful, wonderful, amazing wife” Suzanne in Athens, beginning a partnership that has defined their shared leadership, philanthropy and global friendships.

Mr. Cohn’s civic service also included an appointment by President Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Council of the Thirteen Original States, where he served as Secretary, as well as board roles with organizations such as the National Liberty Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Public Radio, the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs International Board and as an active member of the White House Historical Society.

“The world has lost one of the greatest men who touched the lives of everyone he met,” said his daughter Kimberli Bailey. “But I lost my dad and my hero. To know him made me a better person.”

Added his son Jonathan Cohn, “My father gave my life a sense of meaning and purpose and his love, especially for his granddaughter Tania, will stay with us always.”

Together with Suzanne, Mr. Cohn championed hundreds of charitable initiatives, combining quiet generosity with hands-on leadership. The impact has been especially meaningful in the fight against Type 1 diabetes, where his fundraising, advocacy and personal giving to Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF) have helped accelerate research long before the cause touched his own family. The couple’s philanthropy also reflects a deep and enduring commitment to Jewish life and education, including long-standing support for synagogues, Jewish cultural institutions, Holocaust remembrance and education programs, and national Jewish organizations including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The National Museum of American Jewish History, the Naples Holocaust Museum & Education Center and Jewish Federation.

In Philadelphia, creatively staged dinner parties hosted by Norman and Suzanne at their Radnor estate or city apartment were often held in conjunction with charitable fundraisers and featured unique personal touches and carefully chosen pieces from their worldwide travels. As often noted in society columns, guests mingled with up-and-coming artists as well as business leaders, politicians and members of storied Philadelphia families like the Pews, Biddles and Drexels. As one guest remarked in a Philadelphia Inquirer magazine profile on the Cohns’ legendary hospitality, “If I had to choose between an invitation to the White House or to the Cohns, I’d choose the Cohns.”

Mr. Cohn’s devotion to technology continued into the social media age, when, at 91, Cohn became an inadvertent viral influencer on TikTok. A 2024 video of Mr. Cohn unboxing a package of V8 juices posted by a granddaughter received around 6.9 million views, hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of comments. The initial video spawned several follow-ups and an invitation from the Campbell Soup Company to visit V8 headquarters.

His contributions have been widely recognized, culminating in the YPO Legend Award in 2025, honoring not only his extraordinary leadership and service, but also his enduring care for others and commitment to those less fortunate.

Of his company’s longstanding generosity, Mr. Cohn once said, “From a young age, my parents instilled in us the importance of helping others. At ASI, we’re a small, family-owned company made up of people with big hearts.”

Norman Cohn is survived by his beloved wife of 61 years, Suzanne; his daughter Debra; daughter Kimberli and her husband Scott; his son Jonathan; his daughter Stephanie and her husband Robert; his son Matthew and his wife Lea; and his 11 grandchildren: Morgan (Felix), Warner (Annabel), Connor, Madison (Joe), Isabelle, Sydney, Caroline, Mackenzie Skylar, Zachary, Benjamin and Tania.

Funeral services will be held Tuesday, April 28 at 10:45 a.m. at Main Line Reform Temple, 410 Montgomery Ave., Wynnewood, PA 19096. To join remotely: https://mlrt.org/livestream/

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to one of these four charities that Mr. Cohn was passionate about:

Breakthrough T1D (formerly Juvenile Diabetes Foundation) http://www2.breakthrought1d.org/goto/normancohn

Naples Comprehensive Health (NCH) Center for Philanthropy https://nchmd.org/philanthropy/

National Constitution Center https://constitutioncenter.org/about/join-support

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History https://theweitzman.org/support

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