Gem Awards was founded in 1988 by Shannon and Bruce Passey in Cedar City, Utah.  At the time Shannon was working for her father, Vernal Taysom, who owned Gem Jewelers.  As a side business, Vernal started engraving corporate awards and trophies, but with another business to run and little time, he was unable to grow the business to its full potential.  This is when Shannon saw the opportunity to buy the small startup from her father and officially founded Gem Awards.  For the first two years, Gem Awards was located in an old building where Lins Supermarket currently stands.  In 1990 they moved across the street next to the downtown movie theatre and remained there for the next 20 years – leaving a mark on Cedar City’s Historic Downtown

After 20 years of growth, Shannon & Bruce realized they needed a larger building to fulfill the demand.  They had the opportunity to buy a parcel of horse property near an industrial park and they took it.  With the move, they were able to build a building to fit their needs and help them supply all of Southern Utah in a much more efficient way.

Seeing the need to expand online, Bruce and Shannon enlist the help of their son Jacob to create a website for Gem Awards.  After almost a year of development, Gem Awards makes their first online sale on gemawards.com.  It was a brass bell, shipped to Maria in Miami Florida!

Jacob expands our products to the ETSY marketplace.  Known for it’s personalization, Gem Awards products become and instant hit on the platform.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gem Awards shipped over 10,000 custom medals to first responders all of the country.  These medals recognized them for their selfless service during this difficult time in world history.

After just 2 years on the platform, Gem Awards is recognized as a Top 1% seller, selling more product than 99% of sellers on the platform.

After graduating from Southern Utah University with a bachelors in Management and Accounting, Gem Awards is sold to Jacob Passey and he is named President and CEO.

With growing success in the eCommerce landscape, Gem Awards sets their eyes on the worlds largest online marketplace – Amazon.  A strategic hire is made, and Darren Styler joins the team.  With expertise in starting and scaling multiple Amazon stores, Darren quickly grows Gem Awards’ presence on the platform and soon many products become featured as Amazon’s Choice.

With daily order processing exceeding 300 orders per day, Gem Awards expands to a second production facility in Cedar City and hires a new team to exclusively process online orders.

Gem Awards moves into the modern age with a new logo, fresh color pallet and simplistic fonts.  The rebrand is slowly rolled out throughout the year on signage, packaging and products.