Long before founding Trinity Packaging Supply and becoming CEO, Anthony Magaraci was on his way to becoming an entrepreneur. Buying a lawn mower and making money cutting grass as a kid, it wasn’t unusual for Magaraci to work three jobs, including selling electronic filing systems and working as a server.
After graduating from Rowan University, he put his résumé on monster.com and was soon contacted by someone in the packaging supply business. The experience not only presented him with a whole new world but made him realize how many untapped business opportunities existed.
“When I was contacted by the packaging industry, I liked that people were already using the products they sold,” he tells us. “It was easy to quote them and try to save them money.” The young Magaraci knew that if he got the sale, customers in this highly commoditized, relationship-based world of packaging would order from him again.
A better way
In a short time, Magaraci built a foundation of faithful customers and deepened his knowledge of the industry. The basics at the time were simple: packaging operated under a traditional distribution model where customers bought from manufacturers in bulk, stored products in their own warehouses, and delivered products locally at a markup.
Magaraci knew there had to be a better way to break down barriers to entry in the industry. This soon led to finding customers in his territory who had shipping locations all over the country. Many were using the same products and had national procurement teams.
“There was a very underutilized policy for most manufacturers where—if you ordered two or three pallets worth of a certain product—it would drop ship to anywhere in the country for free,” he shares. Instead of using the traditional distribution model, Magaraci could ingeniously leverage the drop ship model, which meant packaging products could be sold online without keeping physical inventory in stock. As a result, his mission was to share the value for corporate procurement groups in major companies with locations all over the country, standardize the packaging products they used, and drop ship for savings.
After a few years of working for someone else and teaching them how to manage drop shipments, Magaraci got to where he realized: ‘I can do this on my own.’ “I didn’t come from money, but I was confident in my sales ability,” he says. “The drop ship model was underutilized, and I felt like I could change the industry.”
Building a business
Trinity Packaging Supply started in 2010 with a home office in Newport Beach, California. Magaraci had no sales and no startup funds. What he did have was a way to incentivize potential customers, whom he met through cold calling and walking into the backs of warehouses and introducing himself.
Attracting customers within a few months, Magaraci gave them a two percent discount on invoices to pay him in 10 days, and then negotiated net 30- or 60-day payment terms with his vendors. This meant Trinity was always cash-flow positive, and drop shipping from manufacturers meant the company didn’t need its own warehouse to store inventory.
The result was that Trinity could ramp up sales quickly, and there was no limit to the company’s ability to scale with customers, since there was an extensive distribution network already in place.
“I was buying from manufacturers or wholesalers to ship directly to my customers, and leveraging their aggregated inventory,” says Magaraci. “In my first full year of business, I did $1 million in sales, and then for about 10 straight years, we doubled in revenue every two years.” Trinity Packaging Supply’s rapid growth and success attracted attention not only from customers, but from the entire business world.
Listed as one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing private companies eight years in a row, Trinity has also been recognized by Fortune as one of the Most Innovative Companies in America, and in the Best Product category by Business Insider. In 16 years, Trinity has grown from a one-man operation to six sales offices, over 400 suppliers, and more than 80,000 products in stock. The company is about to roll out its new catalog, which will boast about 700,000 SKUs.
SupplyStream™—the Amazon of wholesale
Much of Trinity’s success comes from making smart business decisions and technological innovation, and one way the company is changing the packaging industry is with SupplyStream™.
A proprietary e-commerce platform, SupplyStream powers Trinity and is used to aggregate hundreds of supplier catalogs into one master catalog “to offer packaging’s largest catalog of 80,000+ custom packaging, standard packaging, and janitorial supplies with next-day delivery and low pricing.” Customers get the lowest-cost options and fastest shipping times for packaging and industrial products, since these are being sold by multiple vendors.
Prior to creating SupplyStream, Trinity was drop shipping from about 500 manufacturers across America and massive distributors. The wholesale world of Business to Business (B2B) is different from Business to Consumer (B2C) and models like Amazon, where customers know the exact price. Instead of having to reach out to multiple suppliers and wait for quotes to get the best price, Magaraci worked on getting pre-negotiated amounts for all supplier inventories upfront.
This bold stroke led to innovating the SupplyStream software, getting the best cost from suppliers in specific zip codes, and instantly determining who to buy from.
A one-of-a-kind software, SupplyStream not only aggregates manufacturer and supplier catalogs, but also SKUs. Although the process seems simple, it took Magaraci’s team three years to get product data for thousands of packaging products. Some items were sized using the imperial system, and others in metric. “We had to standardize all of that data after we got it to be able to aggregate it and determine that it was the same product at a certain price,” he explains.
For customers, SupplyStream is accurate, fast, and convenient. Regardless of where the customer is located, the software will find the shipping point with the quickest lead time and the lowest price. A separate company from Trinity, SupplyStream is not industry-specific, and there are no limitations on geographical boundaries. Eventually, Magaraci envisions the software being used by other companies to aggregate catalogs in the wholesale world.
“It’s like we’re the Amazon of wholesale,” he says. “Trinity operates off SupplyStream internally, and when we get an order, it automatically goes to our suppliers. So it’s really easy for us to scale without as many people. We’re the first company in the packaging supply industry that can compete with Uline, which is a multi-billion-dollar company.
Three times the choice
Up against companies with multiple warehouses, traditional distribution models, and storing millions of dollars of inventory, SupplyStream enables Trinity to offer three times as many packaging products. “They all ship locally and deliver within a day or two,” says Magaraci. “For that money, we don’t have to hold inventory because we took that original concept of leveraging drop shipment from our suppliers and really brought it to scale.”
Through SupplyStream, Trinity’s customers access not only the company’s massive catalog, but also receive their own custom catalog based on previously ordered products in their files.
“A lot of buyers order the same items over and over, because they’re manufacturers; it’s not like B2C where you need to stock items all the time,” Magaraci says. “This way, we take whatever they’ve bought in the past and treat it as their own custom catalog at a savings.” And to make ordering easier, customer have their own “My Supplies” page, where they can view their most commonly ordered items.
Along with its many products, Trinity is known for its outstanding customer service. Instead of just selling packaging supplies, the company provides packaging consultations for wholesale customers and helps with finding ways to increase operational efficiencies and lower packaging costs. Welcoming the future of the industry, Magaraci sees Trinity Packaging Supply selling even more products and expanding into the maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) industrial space. Already selling janitorial and sanitary supplies, vacuums, and floor maintenance products, the company will also be offering office furniture in the coming months.
From its beginnings as a one-man operation built around an underutilized drop ship model, Trinity Packaging Supply has grown by consistently challenging conventional ideas about how packaging products should be sourced, sold, and delivered. By pairing an asset-light distribution strategy with technology, purchasing expertise, and a strong commitment to customer service, the company has created a model that is both highly scalable and responsive to the evolving needs of its customers. As Trinity continues expanding its product offering and SupplyStream™ opens the door to new opportunities beyond packaging, Magaraci’s original vision remains at the heart of the business: finding a smarter way to serve customers and using innovation to turn that idea into lasting growth.
