Maxi Container Emerges from a Difficult Economy by Using the Web in a Strategic New Way

Distributor of new and reconditioned industrial containers works with ThomasNet to attract customers outside Greater Detroit

About Maxi Container Maxi Container has been an eco-friendly distributor long before "going green" became popular. Following the Earth-friendly tenets of "reduce, reuse and recycle," the company built its business reconditioning industrial containers. A century ago, Maxi Container was helping other businesses re-use and recycle by taking wooden barrels, cleaning them and tightening the metal bands in order to return them to circulation. Today, President Richard Rubin has continued to contemporize the business founded by his grandfather. Instead of wooden barrels, Maxi Container sources, reconditions, certifies and re-distributes a broad inventory of bulk and custom containers made from plastics, fiber and metals.

Maxi Container's current customers include companies that are household names such as Campbell Soup Company, Sherwin Williams, BASF, the U.S. military and Ford Motor Company. They conduct business in highly regulated industries, such as paint, chemical, food, environmental and petrochemicals, where there are specific requirements for container usage. The buyers don't fit into any single profile - they could be anyone from a corporate purchasing agent, an engineer, a chemist or a factory floor worker that personally fills the container.

No two orders are the same either. For instance, when shipped in bulk, window cleaning liquid is considered a hazardous material and requires transport in safety-certified containers. Maxi is able to handle this with a 275 gallon Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) for the job. Moreover, Maxi takes the containers back after distribution, cleans and recertifies them and re-sells them. Alternatively, another example of a Maxi Container customer is a food service client that needs 100 specially certified 55 gallon drums at a time to transport hot fudge to restaurants. Maxi Container has a staff of over 20 people, working from a new, state of the art 32,000 square foot facility in Romulus, Michigan, right outside Detroit.

Challenge: As the local Detroit market contracts, expanding into new geographies to find new customers Mr. Rubin's original home is Detroit and he remains loyal to it. A one-time tax attorney based in Boston, he returned to the Motor City in 1992 to run the family business, and took on challenges of lost automotive industry sales, an economically depressed city, and the subsequent negative impact that had on Maxi's bottom line. Indeed, Maxi Container once had more than a dozen competitors in the city. Now, it is the last company of its kind there.

In 2009 Mr. Rubin determined the best course for long-term and sustainable business survival would be to expand his customer base geographically, and develop new product lines. "I was convinced that we could use the Internet more strategically to deliver on these goals," Mr. Rubin said. Previously, the distributor's four-person sales team would build prospect lists, combing Hoovers and Dun and Bradstreet in order to make cold calls. "Cold calling takes a lot of work with little return," Mr. Rubin explained. "It's much better when you can drive customers to you."

The most successful vehicle for attracting new customers to Maxi Container had been advertising online at ThomasNet.com. Mr. Rubin relied on the site to attract qualified leads to the company. Yet once the prospect arrived at Maxi Container's website, it held very little product information, and thus, unfortunately, held very little of a prospect's attention.

Recognizing that more and more buyers were conducting business online, Mr. Rubin sought to revamp his website as a place to replicate his off-line sales process. To do so, he turned to the experts at ThomasNet.com, who were already driving business in Maxi's direction.

Solution: Creating an online presence that attracts and keeps the attention of buyers, and helps to market new, environmentally friendly products Thomas Industrial Network helped Maxi Container to devise a web strategy that not only improved the experience of its website visitors coming through ThomasNet.com, but also attracts new customers and promotes the company's newly developed product lines. "I believed that with Thomas Industrial Network's experience in the industrial sector, they would know how best to reach the different kinds of customers I was pursuing," Mr. Rubin said.

Putting the new Internet strategy into action began by integrating the Navigator Platform, a powerful and proprietary technology from Thomas Industrial Network. It helps Maxi Container best showcase its hundreds of different containers, unearth prospects from around the country, and direct them to a sale.

The centerpiece tool is a central online catalog, containing Maxi Container's full scope of hundreds of drums, boxes, bags and accessories. It also includes several new products that Mr. Rubin developed to take advantage of industries coping with new environmental regulations, like eco-friendly spill cleaning kits and hazardous material pumps.

Each item listing in the online catalog is richly detailed, using the sort of descriptions that match how a prospect would search online. From tight head steel drums to plastic and pails, each item is accompanied by a photo, notes on whether it is new or reconditioned and identifies its capacity. Having that product detail helps improve Maxi's search engine exposure.

Once the prospect arrives at Maxi Container's website, either through ThomasNet.com or a search engine, it is simple to navigate. The visitor is greeted with nine different product categories to browse. Those who know exactly what they want can search by keyword or part number to find it quickly. Users can compare up to five different choices side by side. It even anticipates a prospect's questions by providing answers to typical questions - will the container require a special permit from the Department of Transportation? Does it have a UN Mark for international transportation of hazardous materials? What sort of liner does it have? Is a pallet (steel or wood) included?

At any point in the process the visitor can submit a request for quote by phone or email, available throughout the website, so Maxi Container can quickly close the sale.

Results: Reaching beyond Detroit - Drawing new customers from around the country leads to record sales of new and existing products alike Since launching the web strategy, results have been very encouraging. Maxi Container sales are up double digit percentages, as the company continues to set successive months of sales records, all attributable to its new online catalog. New customers are coming from across the country and from new industries, including:

• An environmental waste customer placed a large order of hazmat containment accessories from the new product line;
• A national uniform company purchased several hundred containers to transport ink-stained towels from printer rollers to washing facilities across the country; the sale represents a new industry for Maxi Container;
• A multi-national pharmaceutical company with a facility in Puerto Rico found Maxi online and purchased a custom drum that took one year to design;
• A food industry customer ordered multiple 55 gallon steel containers with an FDA-approved food-grade lining to ship soybean oil from Michigan to Asia;

Having the online catalog has helped Maxi Container to cross and up-sell to existing customers too, as the customer can now see the distributor's entire enterprise. "I can't tell you how many customers said they didn't appreciate all that we could offer until we created the online catalog," Mr. Rubin admitted.

A U.S. military contractor, which had worked with Maxi since 2007, is one example. Since going live with the online catalog, the purchasing agent was able to see Maxi's full breadth of offerings and upgraded the account, purchasing thousands of camouflaged containers for shipping military grade lubricants like oil and engine coolants for tanks and aircraft overseas. They've now become Maxi's fourth largest customer.

Knowing how the customer uses the Maxi website is a key part of the web strategy too. Mr. Rubin uses Web Traxs®, a tracking and reporting tool, so that he can see first hand who is coming to the site, and what they do there so he can make adjustments. It lets him track how visitors find the company, confirming that his most qualified leads come through ThomasNet.com. And unlike before, with the improved website content, he is able to keep the prospect's attention. It is not unusual for a prospect to spend from five to nine minutes at Maxi's website, versus the industry average of less than three minutes.

The traffic to Maxi Container through general online search engines has grown exponentially. Thanks to the exacting language and breadth of content in Maxi's new online catalog, the company is ranking high in the search engines for specific terms like "fiber drums approved for shipment of hazardous." Such results have encouraged Mr. Rubin to add yet another new product line to his inventory, this time made for the Earth-friendly consumer marketplace. He is reconditioning containers once used to hold food, for consumers to use as rain barrels and composters.

The new business coming to the company required more space and more staff. During the summer of 2011, one year after implementing the new Thomas Industrial Network strategies, Maxi Container moved into its new facility, outfitted with the latest capabilities designed for the container distribution and material handling industry. This new facility is twice as large as its former downtown Detroit location, and is equipped with 28 shipping docks.

As his son Joshua becomes the fourth generation to join Maxi Container, Mr. Rubin remains bullish on the future. He's begun hiring additional employees: "Maxi Container has been re-inventing itself for a century. Our innovation comes in many forms, whether it's a new product or a new way to reach customers. I am optimistic that we are on track for another record sales year and we've got Thomas Industrial Network to thank for it."

September 2011