Detour Direct

Detour Direct

Entrepreneurs by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

An aspiring star chef took a colossal risk 20 years ago when he took over a tiny Asian-style furniture business. The payoff has been as big as the risk, both in multimillion-dollar revenues and in the introduction to his business partner and future wife.

Anthony Minicucci grew up in Chicago and is not easily taken in. No one's going to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge. Or the Michigan Avenue Bridge, for that matter.

So in 1985, when three college professors from Maharishi International University - a small business management school founded by a Vedic sage in Fairfield, Iowa - approached Minicucci about buying their Chinese-centric import/export business, the feeling wasn't exactly mutual. Minicucci shot them a steely, city-bred stare that screamed "Are you nuts?"

He had just opened his Sarasota-based catering business, Prince and the Pauper, and was looking to grow it. And he had never set foot outside the United States, much less in China - communist China. "It was way out in left field," he says, "going into the Chinese-Far East trade business. I was adamantly against it."

But the more these professors learned about Minicucci, the more they courted him for their fledging business, which focused on selling Asian-style handmade furniture and antiques wholesale, and was based in Hong Kong and Boca Raton. For starters, Minicucci was young, only 20 years old at the time.

And he was ambitious.

Not only was Minicucci a star-trained chef who was self-funding his own catering operation, he also was running a car detailing business in whatever spare time he had. When the trio of professors visited Minicucci once, soon after they met him when he catered a college party in Sarasota they hosted, they saw a fleet of 11 Sarasota Yellow Cabs waiting to be polished.

So the professors were convinced they had their man. And they kept at it until Minicucci, now 41, finally relented and agreed to go on a trip to China. One trip became two and then three, until eventually, Minicucci was hooked.

Buddhas and silk

The courtship resulted in a massive shift in Minicucci's plans, both for his business and his life. On the business front, he gave up his dream of becoming a world-class chef to grow what's now known as Decor Direct into a thriving international business. The business has grown nearly every year since he took it over, including the last five years of double-digit percentage growth in sales volume and revenues; Minicucci declined to release specific revenue numbers.

What's more, when Minicucci bought the business, he teamed up with Celeste Gruenstein, then an attorney for the professors' company, who specialized in international law. Gruenstein, who still works for the company, soon married Minicucci.

The company has grown in other ways, too. It's in the process of moving from an 8,000-square-foot facility/showroom/sales floor in an industrial part of Sarasota to a space three times as big a few miles away. It has about 35 employees, including 20 in two China-based offices. The growth potential was recognized five years ago, when the company was named the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce's Young Business of the Year.

The 2006 version of Decor Direct is what Minicucci considers a hybrid of a wholesaler, importer and public distributor, focusing on art-inspired handcrafted furniture and accessories. Prices of products range from $5 to $50,000, from silk flowers to hand-carved Buddhas to a 120-year-old Chinese opium bed.

The company has seven wholesale product lines, as the wholesale business has been Minicucci's most profitable unit. The lines, from 13 Asian countries, range from recycled teakwood furniture to Collector's Secret original oil paintings, Gruenstein says. Customers vary, from the standard furniture stores to the quirky dress shops, to restaurants to auctioneers.

Business has been so strong the past year, Minicucci says, the company is considering expanding to other markets, either through self-owned locations or franchising. The company has refined its mission, Minicucci and Gruenstein say, to strive to "cut the cost of cool decor."

"We continue to be a gazelle," says Minicucci, "and jump on trends quickly."

The entrepreneurial itch

Marrying his business partner and traveling regularly to Asia was not what Minicucci had in mind in the mid '80s, working as a chef in a swanky Dallas restaurant. "I was pursuing to be the best chef in the world," Minicucci says.

So naturally, when the Ritz-Carlton announced plans to open a hotel in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, Minicucci moved there, even without a job or even an interview. He waited on line with hundreds of other aspiring chefs. He told his potential employers he wanted to learn from the Ritz-Carlton gurus so bad, he would work for free.

Minicucci was ultimately hired, and for a salary to boot. That job led to a move to Sarasota, where he worked at the Oaks Country Club in Osprey with a former Ritz-Carlton chef. Minicucci had an entrepreneurial bug, though, and he soon opened his own catering business, with money from savings.

Then the three professors came into his life, along with a wife and a partner in Honk Kong, as that was the only avenue for doing business in China at the time.

The company's distribution system was also scattered across the northeastern part of the U.S. Minicucci and Gruenstein moved to Connecticut, a central spot for the company's various warehouses, which were located in places such as Framingham, Mass, New Hampshire, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

In the early '90s, Minicucci made what turned out be a bold, yet successful business call: Rightly predicting the Internet would change the industry, he decided to move the entire domestic side of the business to one location. He settled on Sarasota because he likes it. "We can be on the moon selling furniture," he says.

The move, albeit successful, was complicated. It took several years of paperwork and legwork, but Minicucci says "the savings have been uncountable and continue through today."

'A mob scene'

That change literally opened the door for the next growth phase of the company - expanding the company from a wholesale operation to public sales in 1998.

First it was one weekend a month, then two, then every weekend, and then finally, every day. Minicucci was overwhelmed. He had to hire Florida state troopers to handle crowd control in the early going. "It was a mob scene," he says. "It turned into a business in itself."

Meanwhile, another tremendous growth opportunity was sprouting across the world, in China, which was going through the glacial process of opening up to Western trade partners. Minicucci, a food-aficionado, adapted quickly to Asia through the "food and the kitchens," where he befriended several important Chinese contacts.

The company now has two offices in China, which represent a second home for Minicucci and Gruenstein, who spend about six non-consecutive months a year overseas. While some trips are planned for buying or strategy, many of the journeys are of the putting out fires variety. "Just when things are perfectly aligned here," Minicucci says, "things seem to be teetering over there. And vice versa."

Even when Minicucci's here, he can be there. Besides adapting to Chinese culture, he's also adapted to some technology innovations. He carries five cell phones in China, each for a different region, and when he's in Sarasota, he regularly communicates with his Asian staff by using Google Talk, an online phone and instant messaging service.

The challenges to future growth are run-of-the mill entrepreneurial struggles, despite the Minicucci's swashbuckler-like business. Having access to capital, retaining employees and predicting future economic and artistic trends are three big ones.

Still, even though the hours are long and demanding, and it's not his original dream of being a star chef, running Decor Direct suits Minicucci.

"When we go home at night," he says, "often totally exhausted, we can look at each other and say today was another great day, because we love what we do."

The three cs are the way to be

Anthony Minicucci has been operating offices in Sarasota and China 20 years for Decor Direct, his Asian-style furniture business. His advice for working successfully abroad while maintaining operations domestically revolve around what he calls the three Cs - culture, capital and currency.

• Culture: Past the obvious difference between the U.S. and other countries, it helps to be specific in foreign lands. "Because what works in one part of China," Minicucci says, "may not work in another part of China and certainly won't work in Thailand or Vietnam." He adds that in many Asian cultures, overlooking American basics such as sex or age "will cost you dearly."

• Capital: Minicucci says access to cash - and lots of it - is key because without it, a potential growth spurt can be a sputtering flameout. "I have found many people fail to project capital needed in order to run operations smoothly," he says, "especially when dealing with suppliers overseas." The thought of not having enough capital when the right opportunity comes around is the fear that keeps him up at night.

• Currency: This is where the previously unmentioned fourth C comes into place: The crystal ball. Minicucci says when it comes to dollar valuations, "the better you can get at predicting the future, the better chances you will have at success." He hones his instincts by reading - one of his favorites is "The Birth of Plenty," by William Bernstein - and by studying past currency spikes and crashes.

-Mark Gordon

A beneficial job

Like dozens of Gulf Coast CEOs and entrepreneurs, Anthony Minicucci ranks hiring and retaining employees as one of his most challenging tasks.

Minicucci, president of Decor Direct, a Sarasota-based furniture wholesaler and retailer, currently has 12 employees for his local facility, including three recent hires. "We don't hire warm bodies," he says. "We look for the right people."

While that challenge has led him to recruit as far away as South Carolina, the task of keeping those good employees has led him to reach into his wallet several times, and not just for salary and core benefits, such as health care.

Some benefits are based on a "team adventure" concept, which includes all-expenses paid activities and trips, such as a whitewater rafting expedition down Class 4 rapids on Maine's Kennebec River; a fishing trip to Gasparilla Island that netted a tarpon for everyone on board; and a week-long art study trip to London.

Other special benefits include:

•A literal free lunch, as healthy food is stocked at company expense in the employee lounge;

•A $50 a month "on-time" bonus;

•An Idea of the Week program with prizes for the most innovative concepts;

•Continuing education and cultural arts reimbursement.

-Mark Gordon