Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401280282
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: EC-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GIBBONS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There's a new guy on the area's corporate block who's probably better known nationally than in the Roanoke Valley.
Innovare Inc.'s president, John Parker, moved his headquarters to Roanoke from Seattle the first week in November. His plant, in Tacoma, Wash., probably will follow in the next week or two. Parker's still in negotiations for the perfect location, but his eye has fallen on a couple of places in Salem that fit his particular needs.
Parker's product - Sizzle-Pak, a environmentally friendly decorative packing material - had the luck of being in the right place, the marketplace, at the right time, Earth Day 1990.
"The Earth Day in April really set off the environmental thing, and we were in paper instead of plastics, and that was hot right then," Parker said. "We were featured on television 16 or 17 times in '90-'91. CNN did two stories on us." National magazines also featured stories on his recyclable, biodegradable product.
While Parker developed Sizzle-Pak in 1989 as an environmentally sound alternative packing material, he doesn't rest on his environmental laurels. Sizzle-Pak has a job to do for his customers before it gets recycled or thrown away.
First, Parker designed it to protect packages. Sizzle-Pak is springlike, shredded from heavy paper, and expands after packing to lock around fragile items.
But Sizzle-Pak's real claim to fame is its aesthetic appeal, with its variety of bright colors. "We key to the high-end retail side. We go for the customers that have the design taste, the value-added enhancement taste for our product line and can afford to pay for it. It's more expensive than other packing materials [such as plastic-foam peanuts], but it's an enhancement, an aesthetic value product that . . . goes into packages that are in the top 25 percent of the market."
Parker adds that it's not quite fair to compare the price of his product, with his focus on retail customers, to more industrial-type packing materials. "We're doing more of a Macy's type customer than a John Deere," he says.
Among other shredded packaging products, Parker says Sizzle-Pak is competitive. Innovare's production plant is a lean operation. "We use two to three [workers] in our plant. It's very automated, very high-speed. We started off with nine or 10 four years ago, and now it's very automated. That's the way everything goes."
Parker says for manufacturing companies such as his, automation is a necessity because it allows him to draw down the bottom line. By producing more for less, his company can lower its prices. "That's my concept," Parker says. "The faster you make it, the cheaper you make it, the lower you can go to the market and expand the market share. Market share is the trick."
Being able to produce in volume also helps. Innovare basically has only one machine, but it will put out 6,000 pounds of Sizzle-Pak a day. "It'll put out more than we need. . . . We can make more semi-loads a month than most people can sell or get rid of!"
With only six or seven employees companywide, no sales force and only two or three workers in his production plant, Parker says he looks for "someone who's self-motivated and innovative on their own."
As an example, Parker explains: "Dust collecting is one of the things that we work on constantly to improve. When you shred paper, you create dust. And when a mill makes paper, it basically has dust on the roll when you get it. So we've got it to the point where I think we've got the cleanest shred on the marketplace, because we constantly work on cleaning the product better and better and better.
"Employees have to be something besides robots. . . . Sometimes you get some great ideas from a $6-an-hour guy without being an engineer," he says.
Parker is working on some new ideas himself for 1994. "We're in R&D all the time for new concepts. I'm always trying to improve the product line."
Looking at how Innovare makes Sizzle-Pak, Parker says, "The process is it comes off of rolls of very thick paper, and then it's compacted in a chamber that I designed. It makes it a little bit heavy when compared to other products.
"So I'm working on another product that individually is a little better looking and lighter weight per cubic foot." The answer, he thinks, is in a paper-and-mylar packing material.
"Some of our customers buy 30,000 to 50,000 pounds [of Sizzle-Pak] for projects," Parker says. A lighter-weight product might sit better with them - and sell better.
Innovare also is working out the details for a joint venture with a Texas paper mill that has an operation in Kentucky. The mill has the capacity to produce 60 to 70 colors of paper. Parker says this will allow him to go to mixes of colors in his product.
"Solids have been a hit for six or seven years, and the market is looking for something different. Mixes are a new focus and a new product we can introduce in the next 90 days."
It's a new process that Parker says nobody else in the country has. Innovare will be able to mix any four colors at any percentage a customer designates. This will allow Innovare to produce specialty packaging in colors geared to all the major holidays. It also will allow the company to produce special orders in a corporation's colors.
But why, being based in the Pacific Northwest, did Parker choose to relocate all the way across the United States in Roanoke? He didn't just randomly put his finger down on a map.
"We researched Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia. . . . We just started disqualifying areas until we couldn't disqualify the Roanoke Valley with anything negative."
For his business, Parker says, "We make our living nationally, so we don't have to be in an area that has job opportunities. A place like this doesn't get impacted by good times that much. Doesn't get impacted by bad times. Studies show it stays pretty even keel.
"We basically moved here just to be in a tranquil, quiet area of the country and still be strategically located between Boston and Miami. That's where our biggest market is, on the East Coast. We just couldn't service the customers from Seattle - too much freight."
Shipping was a big concern to Parker, and Roanoke fit the bill there. "Roanoke happens to be in a great place because of I-81. Trucking comes in and out of here," and can easily connect to any place up or down the Eastern Seaboard.
Also, Parker says, "We use UPS a lot nationwide and UPS' new hub here at the airport was a very big part of it."
Parker also had personal concerns in selecting Roanoke. He is from Atlanta, and his wife is from Huntington, W.Va. - so a move closer to home was attractive. Also, Parker said, "We wanted to get out of Seattle, the rainy Northwest, the big city. It was just headed in the wrong direction for us. We have four children still at home. It got too big.
"We were looking at all kinds of things. Churches were a very strong part of it, Christian education. . . . It was that, plus the economics seem to be stable."
For a business with national markets, Roanoke has proven pretty welcoming to Innovare on the local market. Sizzle-Pak is carried locally by Gift Basket Express on Peters Creek Road, plus it "went down at the Market real good. Sumdat Farms carried, sold it, used it," Parker said.
"For us just getting here and sending out samples, it hit pretty quick. But it's always been that way. It sells itself almost."
\ INNOVARE INC.\ A NEW NAME\ \ The company: Innovare manufactures environmentally friendly decorative packing material for a national base of customers, primarily distributors and large retailers. Local customers include Gift Basket Express on Peters Creek Road and Sumdat Farms on the Roanoke City Market.\ \ Headquarters: Since November on Williamson Road, Roanoke.\ \ Roanoke Valley operations: The company's headquarters are located in Roanoke; and within the next couple of weeks the company's manufacturing plant, now in Tacoma, Wash., will relocate to a Roanoke Valley location, probably in Salem. At that time, the entire operation - which employs six to seven people - will be consolidated under one roof.
by CNB