How 2 guys in their 20s turned an old printing press into a million dollars business
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Loading...After graduating from the University of Cincinnati in 2005, Dru Riess was waiting tables, eager to find a way to make something of himself. In 2007, when his good friend Ray Salinas moved to Texas for love, Riess followed, and he found that the stepdad of the girl Salinas moved to Texas for owned a dying printing business.
"This printing machine was literally in a barn," says Riess, located in the small town of McKinney, Texas, north of Dallas. "It was disgusting. There were mice. There were snakes."
Where he could have seen junk in the old printing press, Riess saw opportunity. The machine may not have looked like much, but Riess had done some Googling and realized it had potential.
To learn about the industry as quickly as possible, Riess traveled to China, posing as a potential customer. "I went over there doing espionage and learning what it was I needed to build," he says. "I learned the science of printing, I saw factories running the way they should
In particular, Riess learned that it took Chinese companies between eight and nine weeks to deliver a finished product to the U.S. Because he was operating out of Texas, he could deliver products in two weeks.
To find customers, in 2008, Riess and Salinas went on a five-day, 3,500 mile road trip in a rented purple Chevrolet.
They got in front of every purchasing manager, business owner and decision maker they could manage. Their pitch was direct: "'This is who we are, please just give us one shot,'"
They did get a shot, and they didn't blow it.
Growth was quick. "We went from about a million $12.0 and so on and so on and so on.
In 2011, Riess and Salinas bought the printing press and old company outright from the former owner. They renamed it Popular Ink.
In 2016, Popular Ink did $25 million million in sales. In the next four years, the business owners expect to be doing more than $100 million each year. They have 51 full-time employees.
Source CNBC
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