HISCO manager sees opportunity in warehouse

WESTMINSTER — For most people, a 35,000-square-foot warehousing facility that sits empty in Westminster would be nerve-wracking. For Douglas Griffith, the branch manager of HISCO’s operations in Colorado, the building represents nothing but opportunity.

Despite the fact that the company’s core business of distributing products for electronics manufacturers has slowed dramatically, he sees the company’s evolving opportunities in distribution and third-party logistics as diamonds in the rough.

?While we have had our feet stuck in the mud in contract manufacturing and suffered through a tough 18 months, I now have a beautiful building with some great opportunities with it,? Griffith said. ?Distribution is not product related. It can go into any industry, and we’re ready to take advantage of that.?

Formerly located in Denver and Aurora, HISCO collectively made the decision four years ago to relocate to its current location at 121st and Tejon Street in Westminster. The facility, which officially opened its doors Sept. 30, has a number of unique features including facilities for cold storage and chemicals management.

Although HISCO has its arms in a number of different areas throughout North America including precision fabrication services, third-party logistics and specialized warehousing facilities, the Colorado branch has been primarily focused on the distribution of products to the electronics manufacturing industry for the last 10 years. That focus was what led HISCO to relocate to Westminster.

?We drew circles around prospective sites,? Griffith said. ?When you drew a circle around here two to three years ago, it was pretty significant in regard to manufacturing.? Those manufacturers included such big names as Lucent, Celestica and SCI. HISCO’s distribution business serving that industry was extremely healthy and growing at 30 to 40 percent per year.

However, when the high-tech crash came, much of the contract manufacturing business went away to Asia, leaving service companies such as HISCO high and dry.

?It hit us pretty hard,? Griffith admits. ?We certainly took a good ride up, but it was just as fast coming down.? Griffith credits the flexibility of his position in surviving the past 18 turbulent months.

?I manage operations here as though this were my own business,? Griffith said. ?There’s a financial arm in Houston that subsidizes what we do but basically we have autonomy. With the team I’ve built around me, we can go off in the direction we feel we need to. When our business falls off like it has in the last 18 months, we regroup. We try to see where to go from here and what looks good.”

In the case of the Colorado branch, Griffith and his current team of seven employees are pursuing two distinct paths. Half the facility will be structured to handle the traditional distribution of goods, which the company holds the rights to distribute. Some of their primary clients include such prominent names as 3M, Loctite and General Electric Silicones.

The other half of the business will involve marketing HISCO’s third-party logistics and specialty warehousing services to companies within the northern market.

?If a company wants to partner and needs somebody to manage their materials and bring in the expertise and the technical side of it, that’s what we can do. It’s a step above,? Griffith said. ?This building has chemical management and cold storage. That’s unique to this market and to the northern metro area.?

While the prices for those services are slightly higher than a typical warehouse operation, that expertise justifies the cost, Griffith said.

?When it comes down to it, we have a little bit higher overhead associated with the building and with the way our business is structured. We hire quality people, and we educate and train them better,? Griffith said. ?We’re the most capable staff out there to provide distribution services. That’s the most valuable tool that we have relative to our company.?

He credits the company’s employee-ownership structure with much of HISCO’s stability and success. The company formed an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1974, by which employees become vested in company stock and will become principal owners upon the retirement of owner Paul Merriman. Griffith said this structure leads to a lot of stability within the company.

?There is real buy-in at the employee level. The ESOP is the key to our business and the kind of people we bring on board,? said Griffith, who has been with the company nearly 15 years. ?We’re not all that different than anyone else in any industry. It’s not rocket science, and it’s not that difficult to make a dollar in this business but to get the right people and have an ongoing effort after 30 years is amazing. We’re one of the highest-rated, most stable companies out there.?

For the immediate future, Griffith intends to keep looking to the horizon and get HISCO entrenched in the northern metro market.

?Two years ago, I thought my life and this business was built on electronics manufacturing, and we’d go on forever as did everybody else,? Griffith contemplated. ?Two years later, I don’t know where it’s going to be, but I know I have great opportunities to go out and find it.?

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