Paper-Wasting World Is Target of Small Firm : Recyclables: Two-person company offers a polyester-based stock that can be wiped clean and used repeatedly. One major customer is the Pentagon.
How did two guys whose office is so small that their desks almost touch persuade the federal government to buy their company’s reusable paper? With a cold call to the Pentagon, of course.
It barely occurred to Josh Shinder and Barry Davis, owners of a tiny Westlake Village company called REUSEables, that the Joint Chiefs might not be interested in trading their scratch paper for a polyester-based replacement that can be wiped clean and used repeatedly.
“I’ve been told since that you don’t sell that way to the Pentagon,” Davis said. “But I learned a long time ago that successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t do or won’t do.”
In a time of $640 toilet seats and time-consuming procurement, the way Davis and Shinder made the Pentagon sale seems unbelievable.
First, they made a dozen calls until they found the appropriate person at Defense Department Services-Washington, the agency that buys supplies for stores inside the Pentagon. Then, they sent samples of the reusable paper, REUSE-A-PAGE, to buyer Susan Lynch, who thought it interesting and decided to give it a try. The government’s procurement process was short because the Pentagon had no similar products to bid it against, Shinder said.
“I have all kinds of fun with them,” Shinder said of his Pentagon contacts. Only three months after that first call, 400 boxes of the paper substitute were shipped to Washington. Shinder, 40, a proud survivor of the ‘60s who punctuates every third sentence with “cool,” said he and Davis, 45, celebrated the sale of the first pallet by “jumping up and down a lot.”
The reusable paper, which costs $40 for 50 sheets, is a shiny, opaque white sheet made of synthetic. You write on it with a water-soluble pen, which the company sells for $15 a dozen. When the page is filled, the user sprays water on the page, erases it, and uses it again.
Like conventional paper, the reusable version can have a photocopy or laser-print image imprinted on the page with hard, dry ink. A fax cover sheet, for instance, can be imprinted on the product and a customer can fill in the blanks with the water-soluble pen. After faxing each page, it can be wiped clean and used again.
Bolstered by the federal contract, the pair, who model themselves after the unconventional founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, began building a customer list that now includes the Library of Congress and Patagonia Inc., the Ventura-based outdoor-clothing company.
Last year, the two-person firm’s first full year in business, the company did only $28,000 in sales. But so far this year, sales have already topped $100,000, and the Pentagon has reordered three times in the past two months.
The company began about two years ago when Shinder noticed how much fax paper was wasted during a job he once held negotiating settlements at a law office. He conducted research on companies working on alternatives to paper and found a European manufacturer of the substitute, and set about persuading his best friend, Davis, that an opportunity was at hand to distribute the product.
Davis, meanwhile, had just survived a brush with cancer, and was ready for a change of pace from running an insurance agency. They worked out of their homes and started with only a few thousand dollars.
Shinder handles sales and Davis handles the books. They are the exclusive distributors of the reusable paper, as well as several other environmentally sensitive products, such as recyclable overhead transparencies and a durable recyclable paper intended for archival uses. They refuse to disclose the name of the European-based manufacturer of the products, calling it a trade secret.
But for Shinder and Davis, sales to suppliers are only the first phase of gaining acceptance from the paper-wasting world. Harder still is persuading office workers to switch from regular white bond to the company’s glossy sheets.
This was particularly true at the Pentagon, where workers use debit cards to shop for their departments at company stores. Since few buyers knew what reusable paper was, the stuff languished initially while workers picked up standard supplies, said Lynch, the chief of supply in the Pentagon.
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When the partners learned that their pallet of paper substitute was being ignored, Shinder flew to Washington, stood outside each store and gave 30-second demonstrations. When that didn’t solve the problem, he went back and did more demonstrations. Soon, he felt like a local and now, Shinder says, “people wave at me in the hallways.”
Soon, though, Shinder and Davis learned that selling it wasn’t enough. They found they also had to teach workers to use the paper substitute correctly.
Even environmentally committed customers, such as Patagonia Inc., had trouble adapting.
Patagonia supply buyer Tim Sweeney said the company tried to use the paper for telephone message notes, but found that employees kept scribbling on the paper with regular ink, rather than the water-soluble pen necessary to wipe the paper clean. Patagonia is now working with REUSEables on another application for the paper.
“It’s fun working with a small company like that because they have the ability to move really quickly,” Sweeney said. Meanwhile, Patagonia is also buying recyclable transparencies from REUSEables for overhead projectors, though at $44 for 100 sheets they are slightly more expensive than the standard sheets. Sweeney said he likes the company’s environmental commitment, as well as the personality of its founders.
Other clients of REUSEables also say they tried the unorthodox products in part because of the dynamism of the partners. The former rock ‘n’ roll musicians consciously work at being upbeat and noticeable. Like the Ben & Jerry founders who put their photos on their ice cream cartons, Shinder and Davis have put their caricatures on some company literature.
But it’s not just company pride that prompts the promotion. Using their personalities, they hope to make their company stand out and stave off the competition they are sure will come.
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The move is part of an overall strategy that also includes a decision not to patent their line of paper substitutes so as to prevent potential competitors from looking up formulas and copying them.
They plan to widen their distribution, and said they have a new contract with a grocery chain to sell reusable paper sheets intended for personal grocery lists.
