TINKERING TRAIT LEADS TO GLOBAL INK

[Anonymous]

Tinkering trait leads to global ink
Cartridges Are Us’ Iocco find big niche for family business
Steve
Iocco has been tinkering with things since he was a kid.His mechanical
abilities have served him well, allowing him to parlay a basement hobby
into a global business.Iocco is the founder and chief executive officer
of Ithaca-based Cartridges Are Us Inc. The entrepreneurial spirit of
Iocco’s family-run inkjet cartridge remanufacturing business, with
roots in St. Johns, has caught the attention of accounting powerhouse
Ernst & Young.It had Iocco and his son on the short list for its
Entrepreneur of the Year Award this year, though the Ioccos didn’t
win.”My husband started it just as a little hobby job,” said Iocco’s
wife, Angie, Cartridges’ vice president. “We call it the hobby job run
amok now.”

‘Mechanically inclined’
Iocco’s company sells
about $12 million worth of cartridges a year to customers around the
world. It employs 65 people in Ithaca and St. Johns.”We’ve grown leaps
and bounds in a very short period of time,” Iocco said.”I’ve always
been mechanically inclined,” Iocco said. He began working with his
father in a gas station at age 10, and has been doing “something
mechanical” ever since.Dave Flower, vice president of commercial loans
at Fifth Third Bank in Lansing, said the Ioccos are “just nice people
that have found a way to grow a business, kind of using their own
knowledge and old-fashioned hard work,” Flower said.”It’s the type of
company you wouldn’t normally see located in Ithaca, Mich.”That’s why
Flower nominated Iocco and his son Dominic, the company’s chief
financial officer, for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Award, given by the New York-based international accounting and
consulting firm to leaders of what it terms “dynamic and growing
businesses.” The Ioccos didn’t win, but were among 48 finalists
selected from more than 100 nominations.Steve Iocco “quit a pretty
comfortable, high-salaried position” at Federal-Mogul Corp. to dedicate
himself to the business full-time, a gamble that paid off in just a few
years, Flower said. Now, he said, the family has “found a niche.”

Full of family
Cartridges
Are Us is a true family business.”We have nephews, cousins, a whole
bunch of people,” Steve Iocco said. “We call ourselves the Cartridge
Family.”In 1997, Steve Iocco was working as a production supervisor at
Southfield-based Federal-Mogul when he decided to start a home-based
cartridge business to meet demand for low-cost ink.”Ink is like, almost
the most valuable liquid in the world,” Iocco said. “You pay almost
$1,000 per gallon, compared to gas, which we think is really high at $3
a gallon. People were looking to cut costs.”Angie Iocco said the
company is able to sell cartridges for less than others because of its
remanufacturing focus.Customers quickly spread the word, and the
company was besieged with orders.”Basically just by word of mouth, it
just escalated,” Angie Iocco said.The company, which started in the
couple’s St. Johns home, ended up moving three times in three years.
Sales, meanwhile, soared to $10 million in 2003 from $1 million in
2001.By 2001, Steve Iocco had enough steady customers to quit his job
at Federal-Mogul and devote all his energies to the cartridge
business.”We started getting calls from all over the country,” based on
word-of-mouth recommendations, he said. “It got to the point where my
wife had given up her job, my son had come to work for us, we had about
15 employees – it was just the right time.”

Ithaca move
As
Cartridges Are Us began to outgrow its St. Johns facility, the Ioccos
looked around for a larger space to buy. Through their United Parcel
Service Inc. driver, an Ithaca resident, they learned that city was
offering tax savings for companies willing to locate in its Renaissance
Zone, a tax-free area designed to attract business to a region and
generate economic growth.”He said we should check it out, and we’re
really glad now that we did,” Angie Iocco said. “We figure the tax
savings over a 10-year period of time will about pay for the
building.”Steve Iocco said he wanted to keep his company in St. Johns,
but couldn’t pass up the deal Ithaca was offering.”For an 8-year
period, we don’t have any property taxes or single-business tax,” he
said. “It was a significant savings for us.”The company moved to Ithaca
in 2003 and has a 20,000-square-foot facility there, but maintains its
St. Johns retail store.The company also has a retail store in Ithaca,
but Angie Iocco said retail sales account only for about 1 percent of
Cartridges’ business. The company mainly is a wholesaler.Steve Iocco
attributes his success in part to timing.”We got into it early in the
process,” he said.Fifth Third’s Flower, meanwhile, said Iocco is “a
very humble individual” who is proud to be “a blue-collar guy who came
up with a product that worked.”

[Author]

August 10, 2006 at 12:16 PM