Salvage Operation Think there's no money to be made from refuse? With a little ingenuity, you may be surprised.
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When brainstorming new ways to collect old money, it never hurtsto consider one of the classic clichés: One man's trash isanother man's treasure.
It's a philosophy that will put Gord Black in the black bythe end of the year. The 49-year-old CEO of Logs End Inc. formedhis Ottawa-based company in 1998, vowing it would only harvest deadtrees.
In the beginning, his competitors likely laughed. Even a friendsuggested he had been hit in the head by a hockey puck one too manytimes. But Black, whose privately owned company doesn't divulgerevenues, says the business is going to make its first profit thisyear, and he has 10 full-time employees on his company roster.
Black's success does not come from rotting land-rootedtrees; he's pulling his product from the bottom of the310-mile-plus Ottawa River, which is full of lost lumber from the19th cen-tury. Each year, Logs End brings up an average of 15,000to 20,000 logs in pristine condition, protected by the coldwater.
From there, the trees are cut, dried, milled, finished andturned into unfinished and pre-finished flooring. "Andthat's where the profit finally comes in," says Black,conceding it's not an easy way to make a buck.
In Scottsboro, Alabama, Bryan Owens, 44, is CEO of UnclaimedBaggage, a store started in 1970 by his retired father, Doyle.It may be one store, but what they sell brings in more than 1million customers per year. Unclaimed Baggage is just what itsuggests: a store selling airport luggage that has gone unclaimed.There is so much of it, the retail outlet has expanded over a cityblock and now attracts visitors from around the world.
Owens, who bought the company from his father in 1996 andwatched it grow 400 percent, says Unclaimed Baggage has exclusivelong-term contracts with airlines around America, Asia and Europe,ensuring his store is the only one of its kind. It's also proofthat the word "trash" should be used with wide latitude.The lumber slumbering in the Ottawa River is hardly garbage, andbefore Unclaimed Baggage began, unclaimed baggage was oftenauctioned off to excited airline employees. Rather, the key ismaking something out of what others believe is nothing."Sometimes entrepreneurs want to make a huge splash and goslay Goliath," says Owens, "but there's a tremendouspower in finding a niche and dominating it."
