Partners for Incentives

PFI is a 93-year-old certified woman-owned leader in the field of incentives, recognition, and engagement, founded under the name of Schaffer Partners during the height of the Great Depression in 1932. We still retain that name for corporate purposes.

PFI may be one of the world’s first incentive companies, and certainly among the first committed to selling only through promotional and other distribution partners. While a few recognition companies date back earlier, they originally launched as sellers of jewelry and commemorative items and expanded into direct corporate sales. Our founders Louis L. Schaffer and Joseph Kargher started out as a marketing company for retailers, selling them "premiums" or reward programs to retailers who wanted to attract customers with ‘earned gifts’ in exchange for their patronage.

From there, it was a natural extension to enter the trading stamp business under the name of Family Stamps, which marketed trading stamps throughout the Midwest and East coast of the US. In 1959, during the height of the trading stamp era, anticipating future risks to that business, Schaffer and Kargher started a new business enterprise to help organizations motivate employees to increase sales and customer service. The new entity was initially named Promotions for Industry (PFI). In 1989, the company changed its name to Partners for Incentives to better reflect its stated mission of marketing exclusively through third party distributors.

In 2002, Schaeffer Partners was sold by the family to the company’s CFO Mary Anne Comotto, who runs the company to this day as a certified woman-owned business.

Today, the parent company, Schaffer Partners, Inc. and its Partners for Incentives business has grown to help nearly 1,500 distributors a year to provide measurable programs to help their clients increase sales, loyalty productivity, quality, service, wellness, safety or to achieve just about any organizational goal that involves people.