Supplier Entrepreneur of the Year: Eric Levin, Jetline
By Joe Haley

Eric Levin was fresh out of college in 1992 when he went to work for his father, who owned a supplier company in the industry. Five years later he was hanging out his own supplier shingle. Why did Levin make the solo move? He wanted to grow the company; his dad was content with the status quo.

In those early days, 1997 to be exact, Levin was working out of his cramped apartment in New York City, but the president of Jetline (asi/63344) needed more room to accommodate his expanding business. So he moved it to a building and set up shop in 5,000 square feet of space in Yonkers. Although the area afforded government perks, it wasn’t the best location for recruiting potential employees. “About 50% of the people who would actually come to our office for an interview would never walk in the door,” he says. “They’d look at the neighborhood, and drive away.”

Not deterred, our Supplier Entrepreneur of the Year ended up making several moves before settling in. At the outset he worked long and hard searching for the right product. “I said ‘I’m not going to reinvent the wheel.’ If they’re selling stress balls in the market, and back then that’s what was selling very well, I was going to make the next stress ball.”

That stress ball was actually a blue Slinky with a map of the world screen-printed on it. Dubbing it the Global Slinky, he created 12,000 of them and sent one to every distributor in the industry. It was a hit and his phones were ringing off the hook. For the next month he spent eight-plus hours a day taking sample orders while two employees ran the machines. At night Levin ran the machine, then he took a quick break for four or five hours of sleep before starting the process all over again. “In year one, we sold a million of them,” he says. “That’s how I started Jetline.”

Since the beginning the company has grown steadily and is now continuing the growth during a difficult time. “Currently we’re up 20% for the year,” he says of his $18 million company. “If the industry is down 20%, we’re bucking the trend by 40%.”

Levin says the growth has been a reflection of the company’s customer service turnaround over the last two years. “We were kind of known as being not the best supplier for quite some time,” he says.

And as the company grows in market share, Levin is reinvesting back into the firm by adding salespeople, customer service reps and inventory levels. “We’re currently carrying a $9 million inventory,” he says. “Most of the industry is going the other way and consolidating.”

But that’s the risk most successful entrepreneurs are willing to take. “If I had failed it would have been OK, and I would have gotten right back up and I would have started again,” Levin says. “I get up every morning and I say, ‘Today’s a new day.’” – JH