Friday

Friday, November 2, 2007

Boston Pack and Ship

Ship-shape model

Boston Business Journal - by Sean McFadden Journal staff

One of the largest recent projects Joe Fell and Bill Yankee have tackled as a specialty pack-and-ship outfit is the one that perhaps hits closest to home: After 19 years in business as The Packaging Store, Fell and Yankee repackaged their Braintree-based business as Boston Pack and Ship (officially incorporated as Global Pack Partners Inc.) this fall.

The name change followed negotiations this spring between Fell and Yankee and Colorado-based The Packaging Store Inc., for which they had served as franchisees. After discussing their mutual long-term goals, the two sides agreed to allow Fell and Yankee to leave the franchise system and become an independent business.

"Because we felt as an independent operation, we could focus all of our marketing and sales resources and efforts on our specific marketplace, we chose to become Boston Pack and Ship," says Yankee, 59, who also serves as the business's treasurer.

"I personally didn't have any fear" about going independent, said the 48-year-old Fell, who is also president of Boston Pack and Ship. "Bill and I have been doing this a long time."

The five-person company, which operates out of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse, saw revenue of close to $1.1 million in 2006. Fell and Yankee expect to increase that by 7 percent this year.

While the name has changed, Fell and Yankee have held fast to their niche as "small-load specialists" providing customized packing and shipping for fragile domestic and international shipments generally under 1,000 pounds. This would include packing and shipping for small household or student moves or items ranging from family heirlooms to high-end computer servers for corporate clients.

Their average sale is about $1,000, which covers pickup, packing, shipping and insurance.

"The added value is the complete package of services and the ability for the customer to get it all in one spot," Fell says.

Said Al Schrade, executive director of Massachusetts Movers Association Inc. in North Attleborough: "The niche Boston Pack and Ship fills in the marketplace is based on their being small-shipment specialists for consumers, as well as some moving companies that are unable to handle smaller shipments, either because of scheduling issues or because it becomes too costly for the consumer."

Client Scott Morrison, lead systems support engineer at Quincy-based Modiv Media, says, "The way they ship my products, there's no way they're going to move in the box ... They've been 100 percent reliable."

Fell and Yankee have made a major capital investment in their recent re-branding efforts; they plan to spend between $40,000 and $50,000 to cover attorney fees for the separation agreement, a new logo, collateral materials, a new Web site and a public relations campaign to manage their notification program for vendors and customers.

"It is a lot for us," admits Yankee of the expense. "But, we see the branding as an ongoing process. It's the most important thing we can do for the next 10 years."

Fell and Yankee each bought into the Packaging Store franchise back in 1988 and 1991, respectively. Fell's was in Norwell, and Yankee's was in Boston. They merged their operations in 1999.

"We were sharing employees to get larger jobs done. We were buying from the same people," Fell says. "We were advertising in the same place. It kind of made sense, that as long as we could pull it off and put it together under one roof, the economies of scale would follow. And it did."

In 2000, the business had a record sales year, hitting between $1.4 million and $1.5 million in revenue.

But a year later, sales dropped off when the fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks caused a dramatic decrease in overseas and domestic shipping.

"We probably increased our time out of the office, where Joe and I would both make direct sales calls," Yankee says. "But our fixed costs are low enough that we were never in any danger of putting ourselves out of business."

While neither Fell nor Yankee say they feel there's a big barrier to entry in this line of work, they do say it requires some special expertise.

"You have to be very detail-oriented, because you're handling other people's goods, whether they be personal or corporate -- and you'd better be responsible for them," Fell said. "And you'd better be prepared to work damn hard, in terms of long hours and physical work."

Sean McFadden can be reached at smcfadden@bizjournals.com.