Russell Halsted

ASA’s Chief Marketing Officer’s 40+ year career began when he taught himself calligraphy at the age of 16. You may not know his name, but if you own a TV, you certainly know his work.

• Transitioning from pure design to strategic planning, the early years of his career was mostly corporate, where he honed his branding skills with major companies such as American Express, AT&T, Black & Decker, Citicorp, Ford Motors, Harley-Davidson, McDonald’s, Nestle, Pepsico, Phillips 66, Planters, RJ Reynolds, Taco Bell, Texaco, US Air and Wendy’s. Halsted may be best known for his ability to think outside of the box.
• Halsted’s footprint in sports is ineffable. He’s worked with most of the biggest sports companies in the world. With Champion, he created merchandise for over 90 college bookstores and uniforms for ten NBA teams in the 1990s, including the first Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies, whose merchandise popularity was right behind the Chicago Bulls. All this, during Michael Jordan’s peak of popularity, and before either team had drafted a single player.
• In the early 90’s, Reebok hired Russell to work with their new licensed apparel division. His role was to create and design everything that Reebok represented in collegiate, professional and Olympic sports. This added up to over 46,000 individual projects that Halsted and his staff completed over the span of 5 years. In addition, Russell developed the branding for all 22 Int’l Roller Hockey League teams. All this, while he was also branding 9 new teams for the American Basketball League (the first professional woman’s league); as well as all the Reebok teams in the 1996 Olympics and ...
• The numbers are staggering. Together with his Champion experience, Halsted has produced 3,000+ different apparel programs for high schools, colleges, professional and Olympic sports.
• Halsted has also designed innumerable amounts of memorabilia and/or branding for superstar athletes ... Al Unser Jr.; Tony Dorsett; Barry Sanders; Pat Summerall; Gale Sayers; Joe DiMaggio; Willie Mays; Wilt Chamberlain; David Robinson; Arnold Schwarzeneggar; Lou Holtz; Troy Aikman; Emmitt Smith; George Foreman; Mike Ditka; Joe Namath; Walter Payton; Randy Johnson; AJ Pollock; Andrew McCutchen; Carlos Gonzalez; Clint Hurdle; Dwight Howard; Eric Gagne; Frank Robinson; George Karl; George Springer; Jamar Smith; Jameis Winston; Jimmy Rollins; JJ Hardy; Justin Turner; Justin Upton; Klay Thompson; Lorenzo Cain; Mats Wilander; Michael Brantley; Michael Johnson; Nick Mangold; Nolan Arenado; Nomar Garciaparra; Orlando Franklin; Patrick Peterson; Russell Wilson; Steve Young; Tyrann Mathieu; Tyrone Crawford; Derek Thomas, et al.
• Halsted has always gone beyond the limits to achieve perfection. In his case, he made sure to take the time to learn the finer points of not just design, but quality control and process.
• From the earliest stages of his career, Halsted made the effort to understand the manufacturing business as much as understanding production, printing and packaging of the incredible merchandise he creates.
• In the apparel business, no one is better than Halsted in fabrics, cut & sew, embroidery, sublimation printing, embossing, screen printing and tackle twill.
• Together with his old friend, (NBA Hall of Famer) Rick Barry, Russell has committed his career to developing merchandise that best represents “Made in the USA.”