Dream Big: ZipMail Marketing

On The Road

ZipMail Marketing in Rancho Cordova, CA, is the business venture of Ron Weber and Andy Cody. The partners hope to expand their business to have a nationwide presence.

Karen Lowery Hall

Quickprint.Com

In December 2003 Ron Weber and Andy Cody started a grand venture. They turned what started as a niche need of their former employer into the opportunity to have their own business. Along with a silent third partner, they launched ZipMail Marketing in Rancho Cordova, CA.

“Andy Cody and I were working with a large national collection agency in 2002 and the later part of 2003,” says Weber. “We quickly realized that they had no real marketing campaign. So we developed an in-house marketing campaign – developed the pieces and started doing marketing on our own. Then, office by office, others heard about what we were doing because we were leading the country in sales. More and more offices wanted to pick up our design work and asked us to mail their products, so we started going out and buying a piece of equipment here and a piece of equipment there.”

That was when they made contact with the person who provided the key to owning their own business. “We partnered up with one of the largest remanufacturers of mailing equipment on the West Coast. He became a third partner in the business,” Weber says.

Today Weber is ZipMail’s CEO, Cody is president, and the third element of their trio prefers to remain in the background.

“The collection agency had more than 130 offices nationwide and we were serving the majority of those offices, doing their marketing and their mailing,” Weber continues. “We turned around in November of 2003 and pulled in almost $10,000 that month with just this one client. And we said, ‘You know what? There’s money in the billing business!’ We were really kind of working backwards because we really are a marketing firm first that does mailing second. And that’s what gives us our strength.”

Print That!

In the early days, the company didn’t offer printing services. However, as business grew it became a natural step to add that service to the mix. “It was really just by necessity,” Weber observes. “We decided to do more and more of our own printing because clients didn’t want to go have it printed someplace else and then bring it to us. So we started coordinating the printing; doing some brokerage on the printing side. Then we started buying printing equipment.”

Adding printing to the business model led ZipMail Marketing to a spot on QP’s Top 100 list this year with sales of $3 million. The fact that the company produced that volume with only seven employees produced the highest sales per employee (SPE) ever reported in the Top 100: $428,571.

By early 2006, the company was poised to experience a major jump in growth. By spring, Weber says the number of employees had grown to 10, including two new salespeople. By summer, it was in a new, much larger location and was looking to add at least another three employees.

Driving that growth is an aggressive sales program. “We’ve added two new salespeople. We’ve taken on quite a bit now in the real estate industry and we’re launching a campaign servicing the pest control industry, the pool industry, automotive,” explains Weber. “This month, we closed out the month just shy of $900,000, of which about $560,000 was postage, so you can see the difference. We’re on track to do, without postage, about $5 million to $6 million this year.”

It isn’t likely that ZipMail – or any other company – will approach that record SPE number again. It was just a case of the right numbers falling into place in just the right time frame.

It’s a People Thing

When a company stands on the brink of major expansion, the experience can be exhilarating. And terrifying. The increased business that leads to fast growth is a two edged sword. If not managed properly, it can kill a firm as surely as falling sales.

Weber cites hiring the right employees as the primary element of his growth management strategy. “We’re hiring experienced pressmen. We’re hiring experienced graphic designers. We’re hiring experienced mailing equipment operators. We are paying more than the industry standards. Therefore, we’re putting what I call ‘golden handcuffs’ on our people because our key to this growth is paying our people a lot of money.

“I think the industry has so underpaid their people that finding qualified people is really not an issue for us. That’s especially true here in the Sacramento area. We have a fairly large market here.”

Of course, he knows that money alone doesn’t keep those golden handcuffs in place. Numerous HR studies show that today’s professionals are looking for more than a paycheck. To address those concerns, ZipMail offers a benefits package that includes full medical insurance and a 401(k) program.

However, the biggest incentive the company offers may be its owners’ attitude toward their planned expansion. The idea of a built in upward career path is just the ticket for attracting and keeping superstar performers.

“We’re going to be aggressive here in California, we’re going to simultaneously look at Los Angeles and the Bay area for additional expansion,” Weber asserts. “What we’re doing right now is, the people we are hiring, we tell them, ‘We’re not actually hiring you for this position, we’re grooming you for future positions.’ Therefore, we’re hiring them with that philosophy. We’re designing an opportunity to grow with a company and that’s what we’re putting on the table. And I think that’s one of our strengths – to tell a machine operator that while you’re going to start out as a machine operator, our goal is to groom you to be a shop foreman here so that within six to nine months you will be running a shop of your own. That’s our goal.”

Tomorrow: The World

Once they conquer the California market, the partners have even bigger plans. “Our goal is to have a national footprint,” he reveals. “We have certainly got the business model that lends itself to that with the right people in place. And because of our partner’s ability to attract other dealers nationwide, there’s no reason why this can’t be duplicated many times over.”

In fact the first negotiations are already in the works. Weber says, “We are negotiating to open up a plant in Chicago and one in Florida.” In fact, he and Cody have already made contact with interested parties in those areas.

With the big plans for expansion and the talk of training employees to take over and manage plants, one might wonder if the partners have any thoughts of franchising their business model. And it comes as no surprise to learn that the question has arisen.

“Talking to our attorneys at this point, they’re just saying hold off on the franchising area because we have kind of a unique business model,” Weber notes. “To try to duplicate that on a franchise basis, I don’t think it’s going to be real practical. I think we’re more in tune to taking our same business structure that we have now and duplicating that in the areas where we want to go.

“The biggest challenge, obviously, is going to be overseeing the quality of the work when you get into remote locations. We are concerned about being able to put out high quality work and the timeliness of getting that work out the door,” he points out.

“We’ve built a reputation of being the on-time guys and the lowest price structure at the same time. Those two are sometimes not necessarily mutually compatible as far as the business world is concerned. Finding people who have that same philosophy, I think, will be the biggest challenge we have as far as hiring upper management.”

It took vision and daring to build a missing marketing program into a thriving business. To chalk up earnings of $5 million to $6 million dollars in the resulting company’s third year took a heavy dose of business savvy. It leads one to believe that if anybody can parlay a printing and mailing firm into a national presence, Weber and Cody might be just the men for the job.