Thinking inside and outside the box: Box Brothers Corp. keeps pace with much larger competition by being creative.

To explain why he set out to start his own business, Robert Goodman relates a story from his childhood.

Goodman's father worked in a factory but often talked of wanting to work for himself, eyeing a shoe repair business in the Bronx. His mother, on the other hand, liked the security that the factory job brought to the family.

So years later, after Goodman had gone as far as he could at a Los Angeles moving company he worked for he made the decision to strike out on his own with the result being Box Brothers Corp.

"After seeing that my dad didn't really get to take that chance I figured I needed to take it," said Goodman, still with a trace of a New York accent in his voice.

Goodman started with one 500-square foot store in Woodland Hills in 1985. Since that time, he grew the moving and shipping supply chain to 35 stores and warehouse locations, primarily in the West but also in Colorado, Texas and New Jersey.

This year, Goodman launches a new venture to place ads on the shipping and moving boxes sold in his stores.

Selling ad space on the boxes brings in a new revenue stream that keeps Box Brothers prices low in the face of competition from others selling moving and shipping supplies such as U-Haul, UPS and big box retailer Home Depot.

Several home builders, a search engine firm and a mortgage company expressed interest in taking out ads.

Goodman envisions placing ads from, say, office supply stores or accounting firms on file cartons used by businesses, or from clothing stores on wardrobe boxes.

"We can tailor the ad to what we think is going inside the boxes," Goodman said.

Goodman lacks a college diploma. His business acumen comes from on-the- job experience. After rising to vice president of a moving company, he struck out to form Box Brothers with a shoestring budget of $3,000.

At the time, he and wife Wendy had bought a house in Tarzana and their son had just been born. Wendy's contribution was the company name.

"We were talking about boxes, boxes, boxes," Wendy Goodman recalled. "We were trying to figure out the name and wanted to include the word box."

Starting small

The business philosophy of Box Brothers boiled down to the simple idea that Goodman needed to take in more money than what he spent. So in those early years it was common to make trips to the bank to deposit $40 or $50 to keep the money coming in.

The small size of the first store on Ventura Boulevard forced Goodman to constantly keep turning over inventory as there was little room to store the boxes, packaging, tape, tape guns and paper sold there.

Box Brothers also provided shipping for small items and in time grew to accept larger items, antiques, and one-of-a kind objects, including the compass used aboard the Titanic. Shipping clients have included The Recording Academy, General Electric, The Getty Center, Wynn properties in Las Vegas, Coca Cola, and McDonald's.

"When UCLA is out of school at the end of the year we send a lot of stuff for the students," Goodman said. "We'll store stuff for them and then bring it back to the campus after the semester starts."

Employees go out of their way be it working early morning hours for a corporate client or dropping off boxes for a customer on their way home, said Coby Goodman, who started with Box Brothers when he was a teenager.

"There is no such thing as no," Coby Goodman added. "We really foster that idea."

Robert Goodman trains his people well and doesn't have a lot of claims for broken items, said Eric Paul, a representative of CDS Moving Equipment, the supplier of moving boxes sold by Goodman's company.

"He comes from a moving background so he knows how to pack things well so they won't get broken," Paul said.

Twenty-two Box Brothers locations are corporate owned. The remaining 13 are licensed stores.

Nixing franchises

In 1989, Goodman received franchise rights for the stores, an avenue he decided not to pursue as it would shift his focus from selling shipping and moving supplies to the business of selling businesses.

Giving him second thoughts on franchising was a closer look at Uniform Franchise Offering Circulars, a document containing detailed information about a franchise. Reviewing those documents revealed that many franchises end up being sued by failed owners.

So not only would he be selling businesses, he would have needed to expand his legal team to handle potential litigation, Goodman said.

"The numbers didn't work out and it didn't make sense," Goodman said.

With licensed stores--two of which are run by his brother--Goodman maintains better quality control. And unlike with a franchisee, he does not collect royalty or advertising fees.

Selling moving and shipping supplies is a unique business in that buying boxes and tape and shipping materials is not an impulse buy. No one is going to come out to buy boxes if their price is slashed by 50 percent.

Goodman puts advertising dollars into online advertising and into direct mailings to homeowners going through a foreclosure or to businesses that are just starting out.

"I want to hit them before they need the supplies so when they do need them I am here," Goodman said.

Spotlight

Box Brothers Corp.

Year Founded: 1985

Employees in 1998: 40

Employees in 2007: 100

Revenues in 1998: $3.5 million

Revenue in 2007: $10 million

Driving Force: My driving force is my family and what makes us stand out from our competitors is our customer service; our employees are truly the best.

Goal: My goals are to expand the company by adding 10 license locations by year's end.

BY MARK R. MADLER

Staff Reporter