Initiative Will Expand Sales Force 40% and Advance Company's Industry-Leading Growth Rate
Berlin Packaging, a leading full-service supplier of plastic, glass, and metal containers and closures, today announced a significant hiring initiative that will add 100 employees to existing offices in 25 metropolitan areas in the U.S. by the end of 2015. Half of the new hires will be sales consultants, increasing the company's current 120-person sales force by 40%. The other half will include support staff such as customer service specialists, buyers, warehousing personnel and package designers.
The initiative marks the company's fourth and largest mass hiring program in the last five years. It is designed to take advantage of major opportunities in the $50 billion U.S. rigid packaging market by leveraging the unique business model that has built Berlin Packaging into a 'one call does it all' supplier with annual revenues approaching $900 million. That includes revenue growth over the past decade that is eight times higher than the overall packaging market and organic growth that is more than four times that of the market.
The company's package design, sourcing, inventory management, logistics, profit consulting and capital financing portfolio of services has fueled that growth by enabling packaging buyers to streamline their supply chains and expand their bottom lines. Over the last three years alone, according to calculations required by Berlin Packaging's ISO certification, customers generated more than $215 million of incremental profit as a unique consequence of working with Berlin.
Those factors as well as the ability to provide service levels such as 125 consecutive months of 99+% on-time delivery have yielded customer satisfaction ratings, as measured by the Net Promoter Score, that lead the packaging industry and are three times higher than the packaging industry as a whole.
The company's performance also led Oak Hill Capital Partners to acquire a majority stake in Berlin Packaging in October for $1.43 billion. Oak Hill invested in partnership with Berlin Packaging's management team to help drive the next stage of the company's growth.
"We started hiring new personnel en masse in 2009 to accelerate our growth and increase our market share. This recruitment strategy, which we call Wolfpack, has already almost doubled the size of our sales force in five years and has made a major contribution to our growth since we initiated it," said Chairman and CEO, Andrew Berlin. "Our representatives in Washington have had a hard time reinvigorating the economy. So we are investing in our own company and sponsoring our own 'jobs bill.' Our new resources will be a win-win-win – for our customers, our suppliers, and Berlin Packaging overall."
"This new Wolfpack will take us to the next level," noted Rick Brandt, Executive Vice President of Sales. "Our expanded team will be able to reach even more packaging buyers and help them be more successful with our broad, cost-effective offering and suite of services."
Hiring has already begun and will continue through 2015. For sales representatives, the company is seeking smart, creative, driven people with sales experience and a demonstrated track record of landing new customers. For inside support positions, the company seeks smart multi-taskers with a strong customer-service mindset.
Once this new group of employees has been hired and trained, the company expects to launch a follow-on initiative to hire even more employees.
