Editor’s Note: Airport Experience News launched the ACDBE of Distinction awards in 2024 to honor small, Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprises-certified firms that excel in their field. The program continues this year. Harold “Gil” Johnson is among four winners for 2026.
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Though Harold “Gil” Johnson has led Procurement Concepts, Inc. (PCI) for more than three decades, it’s not his first career. Prior to founding the concessions firm, Johnson spent over two decades in the electronics industry.
Johnson was never far from the aviation industry, though. He studied aeronautical engineering at the Academy of Aeronautics College and electronic engineering at Fairleigh Dickinson University and frequently assisted his wife, Gale, in her procurement and concessions work with HMSHost.
Johnson decided to transition out of the electronics industry and go into business with his wife in 1990, first operating a gift and news cart at their home airport of San Diego International Airport (SAN) as a subtenant of HMSHost. “As a sub tenant, you’re responsible for everything,” explains Johnson. “So I got involved in the construction side, the finance side – we had to find the funds to do it [and] we had to find the personnel to help us to create this entity.”
Luckily, Johnson’s previous career experience came in handy. “Being in the C-suite taught me a lot about construction and financing, so that transition was relatively easy, because I was used to getting things done, getting things financed, and also managing people and looking for talent and resources,” says Johnson. “You can’t do it all yourself. You have to surround yourself with good, qualified people, get out of their way and let them go do their job,” he adds. PCI not only successfully launched the news and gift cart but expanded its offerings at SAN to include See’s Candies carts, a bookstore, a Hallmark store and several additional travel retail concepts in collaboration with (what was then) Pacific Gateway Concessions.
The team at PCI then focused on supplementing their partnership roster. After working to secure partnerships with additional concessionaires like High Flying Foods, Duty Free Partners and WHSmith North America, the Johnsons turned their attention to pushing themselves creatively, opening The District Market, a shop- within-a-shop boutique at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) showcasing products from the city’s most well-known neighborhoods.
“It stimulated the industry, because you see district markets in a lot of airports now,” says Johnson, “but that concept was originally developed with MRG (Marshall Retail Group) in San Francisco, and we were fortunate enough to be one of their first ACDBE partners.”
Becoming An Asset
Johnson emphasizes that PCI’s partner relationships have fueled much of the firm’s growth. “You have to execute, because if you execute, then you become an asset to the prime, as opposed to a liability — [and] therefore, when they are looking for people in other venues, they will come to you because you are a reliable source,” says Johnson.
Partners like Roderick McOwan, chief development officer at WHSmith North America, would agree. “When you think about a partner of distinction, I think about [PCI’s] involvement over the years – engagement, questioning, challenging yet respectful – which is how we try to act as [a] partner as well,” says McOwan. “That’s the Gil that we know from a business partnership perspective.”
Johnson wants PCI “to grow for the sake of success,” he says, noting that the company plans to add to its portfolio through further standalone and large-scale concepts. In addition, he has taken to focusing on succession planning as a means of ensuring that PCI’s growth remains sustainable as he transitions into a consultant role.
While others may become “the face” of PCI, “I still work daily in the business,” says Johnson, “but I try to do it more as a consultant, and allow our team to grow, and allow them to make some mistakes, because it’s the only way that they’ll learn.”
