Richard Baptiste, the president and COO of World Pac Paper LLC, did the exact opposite of what most people do: Consumers on average look at a sheet of paper and see, well, just a piece of paper. Baptiste and his business partner looked at that same sheet of paper and saw dollars — millions of them.
World Pac Paper LLC (worldpacpaper.com) was conceived and is now thriving as a national paper and paperboard distribution company that services corporate clients, printers and other organizations with raw material and finished goods.
“And when I say raw material, I mean coated and un-coated types of paper, shrink film, corrugated boxes,” Baptiste elucidated on the many ways to turn paper and paperboard into moneymaking enterprises. “We do corner posts, we do labels, etc. You can look at us as a centralized printing, packaging, aggregated or supply chain solution.”
Unlike music videos, which many artists decried as a shallow medium that killed the radio star, some believe the Internet and other modern technological advances will eventually make the paper industry as relevant as the VCR and typewriters. Baptiste assures, with a resolute stance, that paper is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
How was World Pac Paper LLC conceived?
My partner and I grew up in the packaging space. We came up in operations and sales and management space. The printing and paper industry is a $180 billion, so as we looked at the opportunities in that space, from our corporate roles, we wanted to form a company and we definitely wanted a piece of what the marketplace had to offer. But we wanted to come at it from a meaningful, substantial, solid kind of way.
How old is the company and how did you make inroads into this market?
World Pac Paper is 7 years old. It’s a matter of continuing to market our brand and talk about value proposition. We are a certified diversity company, but carry a number of sustainable products in our portfolio. So we carry a lot of green products, a lot of virgin [not already used] products in our printing and packaging company.
What separates your company from your competitors?
We wanted to give corporate America the opportunity to aggregate the supply chain that understood the industry and the power and global strength to deliver competitive pricing, to deliver green products in a diverse template.
Most consumers lack vision when it comes to what they can make good — and even great — money from. What would you tell young people and college students who would dismiss the idea that you can make money selling paper?
I would tell them a couple of things: first off, walk up and down the aisles of a supermarket. Look at the printer. Look at the packaging. Look at the paper companies use on a day-in and day-out basis. Look at the form that it comes in. Open your eyes beyond what you see or what you think you see, because the paper and packaging industry is not going away.
There was real trepidation in certain industries that the Internet would make the paper industry extinct.
A lot of people talk about the Internet bringing about the demise of the paper industry. But that’s only one facet of the industry. So it’s really a much broader industry as a whole.
What are your plans for the immediate and distant future?
Our three- to five-year plan is definitely to broaden our products in terms of sustainable green products. And that means getting into other industries vertically. We are now getting into the food and beverage industries with products and supplies in that industry, in and of itself. Our growth plans include broadening our base in terms of products and services as one component. And then continue to get into other industries that we are currently not in.
Most people work in successful corporations and conglomerates yet cannot fathom that they could be doing something similar on their own. You and your partner did.
What we did is that we stepped back [as employees in the paper and packaging industries] and we looked at who are the paper manufacturers, who are the paper distribution companies in this space, how were they put together. And we looked at how can we put it together in a unique and meaningful way and go and have a conversation with corporate America in a significant way. So when we put our business plan together, we made sure we had the scope and the scale and financial strength to deliver major products to corporate America in a meaningful way.
