Westport Entrepreneur Shares Four Tips for Success

Westporter Eric Levin recently offered Sunrise Rotary his lesson in entrepreneurship. Three years after graduating from college he walked away from a family business to start his own, outgrew two manufacturing facilities, won a coveted industry award, and, now, less than 20 years later, heads up a thriving $30 million business.

Levin joined Lebro Line, his father’s advertising specialties producer in New York City in 1992, right out of college. These companies imprint corporate logos and messages on water bottles, key chains and a host of other small give away items and sell them to some portion of the 12,000 domestic distributors in the U.S., who, in turn, “sell to everyone from the corner pizzeria to Microsoft.”

After being unable to convince his father to expand, Levin left three years later and started Jetline, his own advertising specialties business, in his “cramped New York apartment.” He immediately began looking for the “next stress ball,” a hot mid-1990s corporate giveaway.

In 1998 he moved to 5,000 square feet plant in Yonkers and hired two employees. He soon found his stress ball -- a small slinky. He bought 12,000 from a Chinese producer, “printed a map of the world on each and sent one to every distributor in the industry.”

Then he held his breath over the next weekend. Monday morning his phone lines started exploding. For the next month he took orders while his employees printed and shipped additional slinkys during the day. When they went home he took over and worked until 4 a.m. printing and packing.

Five thousand feet grew to 95,000 in three Yonkers locations. In 2006 he consolidated into a more usable 100,000 feet in Mount Vernon, then outgrew that space in two years.

In 2009 he moved again, this time to a 150,000 square foot former clothing manufacturing plant in Gaffney, SC. Levin called Gaffney a great community. It was “centrally located,” had a workforce used to repetitive garment manufacturing jobs and 18 percent unemployment.

Levin invested $3.5 million, created 100 jobs in the first 90 days and targeted a total of almost 250 in five years. Jetline was welcomed by local and state officials. 

Curious about cost differences between the northeast and the southeast, he responded to a question that “Manufacturing people are paid approximately the same here and there, but middle management is less expensive there because of the difference in cost of living.”

Levin credited his four rules for his success:

First, study. “Study all the time.” Keep learning about your company, your customers, and the economy. Look for the holes in the market you can exploit. 

When banks had their problems in 2008 “people stopped trusting them.” Many turned to credit unions. Jetline followed, with an intensive marketing program targeting these institutions.

The next year his industry saw sales decline by 20 percent. Jetline’s increased by the same percentage -- a 40 percent growth over the industry, and a great market share increase.

Second, “Cash is king.” Jetline buys most of its items from China. Goods can take 90 to 120 days from order to receipt, and require payment before they are shipped.

Levin identified third parties to buy the goods and own them until Jetline draws them from inventory to start processing them -- a consignment inventory. The unique, or at least rare, element was that he offered a 15 percent rate of interest to the inventory financiers.

Many critics called him “crazy.” But, he responded, Jetline’s money is out only for the 30 to 60 days its distributor takes to pay for the finished goods, and every sale is one the company would not have otherwise made.  Now, he added, he has access to more funds than he needs.

Three, “Embrace change.” Levin was on a business trip on 9/11. He couldn’t get home, his phone wouldn’t connect. In the next days he watched companies cancel Las Vegas trade shows for the next six months. But the NFL stopped for only one week, and four weeks later President Bush threw out the first pitch of a World Series game in new York.

“This country will never give up its sports” he concluded. He gave every possible product a sports theme, went hard after teams and recorded a dramatic sales increase.

Four, take risks. “An entrepreneur is one who takes risks.” That’s how he described moving his plant from Mount Vernon -- 40 miles from home – to South Carolina. He paid $1 million to move, and went through a period of uncertainty as the company hired and trained a whole new workforce.

A mere 11 years after founding Jetline Levin’s success garnered him the Supplier Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009 from the Advertising Specialty Institute, the industry’s trade group. And he now sits on the Institute’s Advisory Council.

Levin’s four rules worked, he built Jetline from startup to an almost $30 million business and has positioned it to continue growing, even in a slow growth economy.

For more by Roy Fuchs, check out his blog.