Trendex: Outsourcing to the Rescue

When demand for his company's bindery products caught him by surprise, Jeff Polacek listened to his customers and built a network of outsourcers to handle Trendex's rapidly increasing business.

When Polacek joined the 50-person firm back in 1985, it was a family-owned business selling

a variety of printing products with an annual revenue of $400,000. "They were selling a binding machine and people were ordering supplies for it," he recalls. "So we started marketing the bindery product line, and because we had production capabilities we expanded into producing custom products [for binding presentations]. It then expanded into selling all the equipment in the category." The St. Paul, Minnesota-based company gradually moved its core business from binding and bindery equipment to producing entire presentations.

However, Polacek had underestimated the demand for Trendex's services, and orders quickly outstripped the company's production capacity. He began to outsource production to several different printers in the Twin Cities area, and learned some hard lessons along the way.

At first, Polacek could work with his printers individually. But the work quickly outstripped his ability to stay in control. "You have to stay on top of your vendors, and we didn't at the beginning," he admits. "Now we have a staff of people — an entire department — who manage those vendors," he says. "We have people following up on things, not just accepting what a vendor tells us."

Outsourcing also freed up cash that Polacek plowed into inventory. "A big part of our advantage is we have inventory here when our customers need it. In most cases, our competition doesn't."

By following customer demand, outsourcing carefully and investing in inventory, Polacek focused Trendex's growth and turned the company into a leader in presentation production.

Trendex is still a family-owned business, by the way. Only now it's Polacek's family that owns it.