Five years ago, Chip Emery, a retired big-business CEO, bought a small-time, 8-year-old reseller startup, Supply Chain Services.
At the time, the bar-coding VAR was profitable, with $9 million a year in revenue, but Emery, the owner and CEO of the company, simplified the business. Five years later, the company has just come off its most profitable year in its history, pulling in $25 million in revenue, and is set to make an additional $30 million this year.
So what radical changes did he make to drastically grow the company? Well, as Emery said, it was really quite simple. He just had the company focus on what it did well.
“One thing that we did when I bought it was to focus on where our expertise is,” Emery said.
“I learned very quickly that our expertise was in warehouse, distribution and manufacturing, so I made the leap of faith and decided, ‘Why don’t we focus on what we know and stop talking about selling to hospitals and municipal government, and point-of-sale equipment in the retail world, and health care? Let’s just stop all that stuff.”
Emery had the Minneapolis-based company focus its energy on just three major markets, as he said you can only do two or three things really well at the same time. If you try to take on more than that, you’re taking on too much, he said.
Read more at Secrets To Success: How Supply Chain Services Tripled Its Business
Share you opinions with us in the comment box and subscribe to get updates in your inbox.
