Paper tiger: Dade Paper Co. has been quietly growing for the last 60 years in northwest Miami-Dade. Now it's on a fast track, with a goal of more than doubling annual revenues to a half-billion dollars by 2005 - Distribution

South Florida CEO, May, 2002 by Johanna Marmon

IN MANY RESPECTS, DADE PAPER Co. is like most successful homegrown, family-run businesses in South Florida. It relies heavily on customer service, employs long-tenured workers and, for most of its life, has experienced modest but steady growth. The company, run by its founder Irving Genet, and his son, Lenny, has spent more than six decades supplying products like paper towels, coffee-cup sleeves and cleaning supplies to become the 614-employee business it is today.

The company has recently begun to shift gears, however, in an expansion gambit led by Lenny Genet, the company president, and Chief Operating Officer Frank Sansone. Over the past two years, the company has made three acquisitions, and in the process strongly boosted revenues.

The company bought tow Georgia-based paper distributors--Atlanta Broom Company and Empire Distributors--within a seven-month period starting in July 2000. Since purchasing the two companies, Dade Paper now does business in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina (in addition to Florida and Puerto Rico). Then, in July 2001, the company purchased G. Gonzalez Wholesale, a Miami-based distributor of products servicing the bakery industry. Terms of the three deals were not disclosed by the privately held company, which boasts more than 7,000 products in its catalog, from 150 manufacturers such as KimberlyClark and Georgia Pacific.

"We've chosen to grow the business through acquisitions rather than organically," says COO Sansone, a six-year veteran of the company. "It has helped us be able to expand geographically." Lenny Genet agrees. "Our competition are foodservice companies like Sysco that have revenues of $16 billion a year," he says, "so we've learned that we need to be a regional player and cover as much geography as we can." Genet, who started at the company as a salesperson right out of high school in 1972. says the acquisitions were carefully planned. "We won't ever waste money on something that isn't the right fit," he says.

But a stagnant economy and a faltering leisure industry that took a substantial blow after September 11 shook things up at the company, which, according to Sansone, still logged revenues of $175 million in 2001, up from $150 million in 2000. "Some of our largest customers were the airline caterers," Genet says. "October and November knocked the wind right out of our sails, but things have started picking up."

Even so, Dade Paper Co., which bills itself as the largest independently owned paper-products company in the southeast US, has fallen behind schedule for its long-planned move to a new $12 million headquarters. The facility is being built on an 11-acre site off Florida's Turnpike at the Beacon Station business park in west Miami-Dade. Sansone and Genet say the new building--delayed because of "permitting issues with the county"--should be ready for occupancy by February 2003. The 220,000 square foot office/warehouse, when complete, will be more than twice the size of its current headquarters facility, which is 83,000 square feet.

Sansone says the company, which counts Delta Airlines, Norwegian Cruise Lines and Starbucks as customers, should hit revenues of $200 million this year, with the goal of being a half-billion dollar company by 2005. "Part of our daily growth strategy is to actively look for acquisitions," he says. "It may be a 'hello' today, and be an opportunity six months from now."

In the meantime, the work goes one.

"It's a 24-hour business," Sansone says. "Inbound product [from the manufacturers] starts coming in from about 5 a.m. until 5 p.m. Then, starting at about 6:30 p.m., the product goes outbound from us to deliver to our clients for the next day." The company uses a sophisticated computer system that tracks each truck's location on the road--as well as traffic conditions. That way, a driver can be alerted to a potential traffic tie-up and find another route. While the technology is used to keep the system flowing smoothly, Genet says it boils down to customer service. "We want to make sure we deliver to the customer on time," he says.