Industrial Tapes & Adhesives Company, Inc. of Tampa and Jacksonville, Fla., was started in 1989—but was really simmering in the mind of its owner, Bill Young, long before then. Young spent many years working for Dayton Distributors (later R.S. Hughes), a large 3M distributor. In fact, he calls himself "a graduate of the 3M School."

Young was like many salesmen in that he always wondered "what if," as far as someday running his own operation. During the late 1980s, when the 3M line he was selling was taken over by a new distributor, he found himself pursuing that thought one step further.

In fact, he recalls long-term customers saying to him, "If you ever do anything on your own, we'd be more than interested in working with you,'" he says, adding with a laugh that "I was actually coerced into this by some of those customers."

At the time, Young was working for another distributor he prefers not to name, simply saying that it was not a business that was working—neither for him nor for his customers at the time. Many of these customers had relationships with Young that, at the time, dated back 10 to 15 years, he explains.

"They were depending on me to supply them," he says, "and the company I was with was not doing a good job of supplying them. I felt personally responsible for some of their [customers'] production problems."

Young says that he had been preparing to start his own distribution business for a while. His daughter had just completed college, eliminating tuition payments from his family budget. And as a practical way of living he had "never borrowed money," he says. "I still don't … I sleep better that way!"

So, along with these comparatively tangible plans, he was also preparing himself psychologically—as his frustration with his job at the time grew.

"I was always amazed at people who'd whine about their position in life but chose to do nothing about it," Young says. "And I'd found myself complaining, mostly at home, about [the job]. So I realized that I had to decide if I was going to turn into one of those people who are going to whine all their lives, or am I going to do something about it."

Once he made the leap and started ITA with his wife, Jane, Young was gratified, personally and professionally, to note that his customers were willing to back up their "coercion" tactics.

"I was lucky in that a lot of my customers paid me very promptly," he says looking back. "They went to their accounting people and got me paid in 10 days. They didn't shop me for years and took me at my word with pricing. I'm where I'm at as much because of their loyalty to me, as my loyalty to them."

In addition to tape and adhesive-related products, ITA also handles metals, wood and fiberglass. At the present time, Young estimates that nearly half their sales are in metal (and expected to grow, he adds), wood at about 30 percent, and fiberglass constituting about 15 to 20 percent of sales with the remainder coming under a "miscellaneous" category.

When Young describes himself as a graduate of "the 3M school of selling," he is speaking literally. He went through that company's coated abrasives school, tape school, and its selling school.

"The 3M way means constantly showing new products. That keeps your margins up," he explains. "If you still sell the same products you sold five years ago, chances are, 16 other distributors are still selling that same product. So we're always showing new stuff to our customers."

He also learned from 3M to approach business with the realization that "you'll never have the same business on Jan. 1 you'll have on Dec. 31," Young explains. "For example, if you have $1 million of business on Jan. 1, and you choose to do nothing, you'll only have $850,000 at year's end. You'll always lose 15 percent of your business through engineering changes, product changes, plant closings, etc."

For all his respect for his 3M years and the way that company conducts itself, his "old school" was one of the last companies to sign up with ITA. Young sees some humor in it these days.

"[They were] the one firm I thought would help me and work with me the most!" he laughs. "Only recently have we set up with them. I went 12 years without them when all my background was with 3M!"

But in hindsight that worked out well, he says, "because it forced me to sharpen my teeth on other product lines and made me a better salesman and businessman."

Wayne Golaszewski is director of materials at AAR Composites, which provides products and services to the aviation and aerospace industries. When Young began ITA, companies such as AAR (then called Advanced Technology & Research) helped him get started.

"We gave him the opportunity to look around at what we had and requote some things," Golaszewski says. "Bill was pretty aggressive compared to some of the others we looked at then."

An agreement was forged and signed that remains intact to this day. The salesmen whom Golaszewski oversees find the same appeal in Young and ITA that Golaszewski saw from day one.

"Bill understands what we need and the cost at which we need to have it. We've managed to lower our supplier base just [working] directly with Bill," says Golaszewski.

AAR buys a variety of supplies from ITA, Golaszewski adds.

"The AAR buyers all like the mom-and-pop scenario they have over there," he says. "It's not run like it's a [large] corporation."

Eric Chapman is district sales manager for Standard Abrasives near Clearwater, Fla. Standard manufactures non-woven and coated abrasives and sells through distributors only—of which, one of the more successful is ITA. Chapman shares Golaszewski's enthusiasm for working with ITA, and laughs appreciatively at the "mom-and-pop" description.

"That's definitely how they are," Chapman says. "They aren't like the big houses in the area where, for example, if you don't know the part number you basically aren't going to get any help. [ITA] is different."

Chapman is among the colleagues who go back with Young to his pre-ITA days.

"He has a lot of longtime customers that go back with him," he says, "even back to when he was a sales guy with other distributors before he owned ITA. He's got a nice business there."

When Young refers to "constantly showing new products," he can point to a recent development as exhibit A. Over the past four years, he says, ITA "lost $400,000 worth of sanding belt business." The reason? ITA's delivery time was proving to be inadequate.

"It used to be that three- to five-days delivery for a customer would work," he explains. "But that's not satisfactory any longer."

The same no-nonsense approach that served him well when starting ITA was displayed again in solving the belt problem. So ITA has recently "partnered up," as Young puts it, and will be going into the belt converting business, with new equipment already arriving at ITA's headquarters.

"We're buying jumbo sanding belts, 54 inches by 100 yards. We'll be converting and re-slitting the belts here in-house," he says.

Adding the time and expense needed to meet customers' sanding belt needs doesn't surprise Golaszewski. "He looks at a customer's needs and will basically react to them as well as anybody I know," says Golaszewski.

It is those needs that Young has in mind when summing up ITA's philosophy by saying, "We like to sell to the end user. We think of ourselves as problem solvers as opposed to product salespeople."

Reprinted from ID's ISCON 2004 convention guide.