Beauty beat: now that his kids have grown, Jose Granda can concentrate on increasing distribution of cosmetics to the Hispanic market.

JOSE Granda admits to being a family man--so much so that it's played a big role in the growth of his health and beauty supply business.

After he and his second wife divorced in 1981, Granda was left to care for his three children. That meant taking several hours out his work day driving to and from private Catholic school--not to mention the doctor visits and teacher conferences. He avoided child care--"I was afraid they were going to take the wrong way in life"--and raised them himself with his mother, who is now 92 and still cooks and cleans for him.

"(The business) didn't grow because I didn't spend the amount of time I was supposed to with the business," be said. "(But) it was the best decision of my life because now that they are older, they are going to help me."

These days, with the youngest of his three children having recently finished college, Granda is talking about major growth opportunities for Grandall Distributing Co. Inc., whose revenues last year reached $8 million from $1.7 million in 1995.

With a focus on the Hispanic customer, Grandall stocks the shelves of Wal-Mart, Longs Drugs, Albertsons and Sav-on stores with 1,700 products that include eye drops, antibiotic ointments, skin creams, muscle relaxants and shampoos. Rather than being scattered throughout these stores, Granda tries to place them in a single location--what he dubs a Mexican Mini-Botica (pharmacy).

"They have a lot of different items that you could not find from a normal supplier," said Dennis Raffaelli, general manager of Phoenix Ranch Market, an eight-store grocery chain in Arizona and California whose customer base is more than 90 percent Hispanic. "I've had nobody else up there trying to compete. So he's got it pretty much sewed up."

'Target marketing'

In starting the business 40 years ago, Granda recognized the opportunity of focusing on a niche customer. "There were a lot of Mexicans here and no products (for them) in the stores," he said.

Grandall distributes products that are packaged in bright colors and often with Spanish labeling. That appeals to immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics whose grandparents used the same items back home.

"It is target marketing. It is intelligent marketing," said Linda Assoz, a partner in Makeover Media, a Studio City strategic business development firm. "There is a whole community that doesn't speak English. (Yet) we have a huge Latino middle class."

Retail prices generally range from $1.19 for a bottle of almond oil 

to $10.99 for a bottle of vitamins or antibiotic ointments. Granda says his margins are around 20 percent on products he distributes, and 50 percent for items carried under his company label.

The Cuban-born Granda managed to escape the island nation after Fidel Castro took control, although he says his trip aboard a 21-foot boat took a disquieting turn when the engine conked out in the Gulf of Mexico. "When you are 20 years old, you believe in yourself so much you are not afraid of anything," he remembered.

He relied on family friends in Miami to provide 10 days of shelter, used clothes and enough nickels to catch a Greyhound bus to New York. His first few months were spent cleaning a Park Avenue glass company factory.

A friend from Cuba, who also came to New York, later got him a job working alongside him at a Bronx manufacturer of television knobs and frames. He was soon typing orders and making nightly production reports for his boss. "I was from a little town in Cuba and I was starting my life (again) with people from all over the world," said Granda. "To me it was very impressive."

Utilizing company-paid tuition, he enrolled in English and business classes at Columbia University. Later, Granda moved to Los Angeles to live with an uncle. He learned salesmanship selling Bibles door-to-door.

Eternal optimist

Six months later, he landed a job selling vitamins and minerals for De La Cruz Products, where he said he generated so much income after a year that he demanded a 10 percent stake in the company.

When the offer was rejected, Granda set out on his own. Working out of an L.A. storefront, he began wholesaling products to small stores by going door to door. "I didn't have that much money and I didn't have any credit to start a business," he said. "It was very hard, but I started growing little by little."

By 1972, Granda bought a 4,500-square-foot office and warehouse facility for $26,000 on Sunset Boulevard.

"When we unloaded the trucks, we did it by hand because there was no room for forklifts," he said. "We had to use every little inch."

He sold it in 2002 for $728,000 as part of a move to a 14,000-square-foot building in Glendale. Grandall has already outgrown 10,000 square feet of warehouse space, so plans are being made for a 4,500-square-foot expansion, expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Granda has no plans to retire anytime soon. But his three children, Melissa, Joseph and Jessica, now the company's vice president, sales manager and computer technician, respectively, are learning the business they will one day take over.

And Granda remains an optimist, with visions of using Big Box retailers nationwide to transform his business to the big time. "My children will sell $100 million annually in 10 to 15 years--easy," he said. "The population is growing and our products are getting used more and more."

PROFILE

Grandall Distributing Co. Inc.

Year Founded: 1965

Core Business: Distributing health and beauty aids to Latino supermarkets, discount stores and pharmacies

Revenue in 2003: $5.7 million

Revenue in 2004: $7 million

Employees in 2003: 25

Employees in 2004: 28

Goal: To have a nationwide presence selling products through Wal-Mart and other stores

Driving Force: The growing Latino population