Posts Tagged ‘business’


Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud – There’s a New Type of Business Now!

Friday, December 28th, 2012

gray cloud icon

The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. — Isaac Asimov – “My Own View” in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978)

There has been much discussion lately of the need to reinvent your business model. Everyone from the Harvard Business Review Entrepreneur Magazine  and American Express consistently post articles dealing with corporate reinvention. They tout successful examples such as Apple, PayPal and Burberry.  Unsuccessful companies that used to dominate their respective industries  litter today’s landscape and bankruptcy courts, including such household names as Hostess, Polaroid and Borders.

Here at Maxi Container we have taken a long slow look at corporate reinvention and have made over our company significantly in the last 10 years. In doing so we have focused on our core competencies, looked for new markets, addressed bottlenecks in our management and operation, strengthened our fiscal controls, upgraded our truck and trailer fleet and adopted a wide range of new technologies to allow us to work smarter, faster and mobile with an emphasis on enhancing the customer experience and adding value to our products and services.

Some of the changes are internal and there is no need for discussion. Two of the biggest, our entry into new markets with our mirainbarrel and miwinebarrel subsidiaries, will be discussed in future posts. Our new e-commerce platform, which will debut in the future is another major reinvention.

However, one of the most interesting, challenging and rewarding changes has been cloud computing. This is a much overused term and can be defined in many ways. Here we use a combination of private and public  cloud storage, networking, desktop virtualization, and  software as a service to tie all of our various desk top computers, smart phones, tablets and laptops into a coherent whole. Furthermore, all of  our data is encrypted for privacy, protected from viruses and continually backed  up.  The service is scalable so as we add personnel or locations it is easy to tie them into the existing cloud and network infrastructure. Much of the credit for our adoption of this technology goes to my son, Joshua Rubin, Creative Director at Maxi Container, Inc.

As a result, any Maxi Container sales person or operations person has complete access to any and all information necessary to do their jobs at all times from anywhere. We use our private cloud and various apps such as, shared Outlook Calendars, Evernote, Dropbox, Adobe EchoSign and Kibits (a new collaborative app for android and iPhone) to create a truly collaborative workplace that increases our efficiency and creates additional value for the customer.

Quotes for unique products can be electronically signed and archived and are available 24/7, not just during office hours. Sales personnel have complete access to customer pricing and purchase history whether in the office, their vehicle, or on-site at a customer’s location. Purchase Orders can be processed in a variety of ways including email or Electronic Data Interchange. Payments can be made on mobile devices, PayPal or Credit Card . Several customers are using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to place orders and receive invoices and ACH transactions for payments. Checks are scanned in so they are credited to the customer’s account and deposited in the bank the same day as received. Our goal is to eventually equip drivers and warehouse personnel with mobile devises that move this efficiency and customer value throughout our supply chain.

This move has not been without bumps and bruises along the way.  There were the inevitable glitches, issues with data capacity and learning curves. We are still experimenting with how best to use our new tools and collaborative environment. However, every day brings more and more examples to light of how we can enhance the customer experience through collaborative work and cloud computing. You may never see it, but it will affect every aspect of our business as we move forward with our reinvented business model.

(Note: my apologies to the Rolling Stones for the use of their lyric from their 1965 hit, “Hey You Get Off of My Cloud” in the headline of this post. I just couldn’t resist, especially as it speaks to the encryption and privacy necessary for cloud computing to work. I am sure that this was the furthest thing from Keith Richards mind when he wrote the song.)

Green products are in right now, but what does green really Mean?

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Today, when you go to almost any store, you will find some trace of the “green thing”. You may find energy efficient light bulbs at Home Depot, rechargeable batteries being pushed at stores like Best Buy, or the lack of plastic shopping bags at Costco. These are all signs of a changing environment for the average consumer.

Let’s go back a decade, did you see all of these things? I didn’t, but then again I wasn’t looking very hard back then. The real change is in the hearts of the consumer, but why is being green better? Is it cheaper, not always. Then how is it more beneficial to me? Maybe it is because it is more sustainable? YES!

Okay, now for the next part: what does sustainability mean? It means a lot, literally… from the way the resources for a product were made or obtained, down to the ingredients, manufacturing and distributing process, even things like employees having benefits such as health insurance. Most people do not realize this. So who is responsible for correctly marketing that Green product on the shelf? Sadly there are not enough third parties concerned to monitor the accuracy of manufactures green claims, so plenty of products loosely or falsely advertised as being “green” get by.

After reading Wendy Knowlers Blog Consumer Watch article “Any idea how ‘green’ that product on the shelf is?” about the same subject, I realized that “are we really making informed choices?”

The answer is NO. We are easily persuaded by marketing techniques, leaving the resposibility on the company to correctly and truthfully market their products, which doesn’t always happen. Case-and-point; recently Fair Cape spokesman retorted after being question about whether their products are actually “Free Range”

“We did not call the milk ‘Free Range’, we called it ‘Fair Cape Free Range'” – That is, Fair Cape’s take on free range.


This is the type of attitude that gets consumers in trouble, this company is playing the system. They are capitalizing on a popular terminology that is equated with being sustainable, when in actually there is nothing sustainable about how they treat their cows. This is a prim example of GREEN WASHING.

We try our hardest at Maxi to correctly market our products and stray away from Green Washing techniques practiced by plenty of our competitors. We don’t confuse you with the terms “Recyclable” vs. “Made from Recycled Materials” we are straight shooters, the straightest that I know.

Whether it’s about how your food was brought to table or what was previously in your Rain Barrel, make sure that you aren’t being fooled into buying a product that isn’t truly green. Beware: it’s a buyers market with little responsibility for green washing, companies find ways to creatively brand and sell their products catered to what the buyers are looking for, regardless if they are 100% accurate claims. The weight is on your shoulders, I suggest you equip yourself with a mobile app call GoodGuide (they also have a website, for all of you not currently on the Smartphone bandwagon) to determine before you buy how Good that product really is. You just have to scan the bar-code and wait for the products score to appear. I hope you check it out.

What do you think about Green Washing, has it happened to you? Please comment below to strike up a conversation with us!


NABADA to RIPA while some things change, most still remain the Same

Saturday, October 22nd, 2011

My great grandfather, Charlie Rubin, was a founding member of the National Barrel and Drum Association. My grandfather, Max Rubin, was a strong supporting member as well, and looked to by many as a patriarch of the organization. He along with my father Richard is only one of two “Father & Son Duo’s” to win the Morris Hershson Award of Merit. I have been active in RIPA for about 2 years now, and it has proven to be interesting and fun. It is the coming together of our Industry from across the country to learn from each other, catch up on family happenings and more. The beautiful thing about this organization, though a decreasing faction, is the pride it takes in the independent family owned businesses that were the original creators of the group, as well as some of the most outspoken and active members. I could detail the history of our families involvement in RIPA for many pages, but I am not writing this article because of that. I actually want to shed some light on another Michigan Family Business, and their legacy.

Peter DeWitt of DeWitt Barrels won the Morris Hershson Award of Merit this year. I want to formally congratulate him on this award, as well as share my thoughts on both of our family’s impact on the Michigan economy. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the previous winner of the award was also a Michigan family owned business (My father Richard won the Morris Hershson in 2009). I also do not think that it is a coincidence, but rather an imperative statement of or our economy in Michigan, that despite a decrease in the amount of jobs and cutbacks in all sectors of government across the board, that these two family owned drum companies still thrived. Maxi provides over twenty families with jobs and benefits. We also try and provide a comfortable and fun work environment. (We even have office cats to lighten up the mood!)

I don’t want to get too far off topic here. Peter DeWitt, like my father, both have driven their respective companies forward at full speed during this most recent recession. Business leaders could learn a thing or two from these guys! DeWitt focuses on the reconditioning process and now Recycling, while Maxi has a broader product offering but doesn’t process drums in house. We do a lot of business back and forth, but more importantly we are both invested in competing with the bigger conglomerates for Michigan customers. It is a testament to both organizations that we continue to thrive in this highly competitive environment.

The message of this blog is too support your neighbor, your friends, and your fellow community members, whether you are competitors or complete strangers. The bottom line is the more you buy local and support your states economy, the more likely the benefits will come back to you. I want to again say that Peter has been a strong voice and active member of RIPA, standing up for reconditioners. Both past Chairman of RIPA, my father and Peter represent something that is dying in our industry:

“REAL BARREL MEN!”

Related Links:

Richards Acceptance speech 2009.

Reusable Industrial Packaging Association (RIPA) Website.