Data Destructors

The go-for-it-with-gusto sales instincts Miranda Monahan had when she worked at an Internet-based hardware technology sales firm in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1999 was bottled up for a simple reason: Monahan was a receptionist.

But Monahan treated entry-level monotony like a full-time paid training session to learn all the departments within the company. Then 22, Monahan also pestered the sales director for a promotion. After a few weeks of Monahan's relentless pleas, the director made a deal with Monahan. The novice sales rep could take sales calls on a fill-in basis for people on vacation.

Monahan discovered she was good at sales. A decade later she turned that knack, along with her steely resolve, into her own business. The 3-year-old firm, M-PowerTech, run out of an office in northeast Manatee County, is in the fast growing and fragmented $10 billion electronic waste and recycling industry. These are companies that safely and properly destroy, refurbish and recycle technology hardware products and data other businesses use.

In lockstep with a world in constant need of more gadgets and more data machines, M-PowerTech, with six employees, is on a wild growth run. It jumped from less than $1 million in sales in 2012 to $4 million in 2013. The company is on pace to double that in 2014, says Monahan, with $2 million in sales in the first quarter alone. The firm currently works in a cramped 2,000-square-foot office, but Monahan seeks a larger space to handle the demand.

M-PowerTech looks at e-waste with clients in four ways: how to dispose of technology in an environmentally friendly way; data destruction based on strict industry and legal guidelines; the logistics of hardware removal from an office to destroy or refurbish it; and indemnification for all information stored in a system.

The core of the business model is M-PowerTech will take care of a client's hardware in some fashion for a fee. The fees, normally based on the amount of hardware and data a client has, range from $500 to more than $10,000. M-PowerTech can earn other fees through recycling some of the equipment.

Most of M-PowerTech's clients are small- to medium-sized businesses — the type of companies global e-waste giants such as Great Britain-based Sims Recycling Solutions, with offices in 50 countries, including Tampa in the U.S., might overlook. But not all of M-PowerTech's clients are small. A major component of the current growth spurt happened last year, when it landed Office Depot/OfficeMax as a client. M-PowerTech helps the office supply giant run an in-store tool that provides customers a way to either destroy or recover data from a hard drive.

“We hit a home run with that,” says Monahan, 37. “We are very blessed to have that account.”

Although the services M-PowerTech provides are important, everything the firm does, says Monahan, is secondary to its customer service commitment — a lesson she learned from her receptionist days.
Attitude, she says, goes a long way toward a successful business and repeat work.

“We are really a customer service company with e-waste capabilities,” Monahan says. “I let (customers) know there's nothing we won't do to keep them happy.”

Industry wave
Monahan is also glad she's in the e-waste industry, which is on the verge of a worldwide explosion.

Global e-waste volume, according to a report from Dallas-based MarketsandMarkets, is projected to surpass 93 million tons in 2016. That's more than double the 2011 total of 41.5 million tons. That growth in tons is expected to foster an increase of industry-wide revenues from $9.15 billion in 2011 to $20.25 billion in 2016. One linchpin to the industry growth comes from emerging markets such as India, China and some African nations.

Just like M-PowerTech, Tampa-based Urban E Recycling has focused on small businesses, companies with around a dozen or so computers. Greg Rabinowitz, who had been in the metal scrap industry, founded Urban E Recycling in 2012. He says that niche has worked and the firm has since grown exponentially.

“This is the wave of the scrap industry,” says Rabinowitz. “Every company has computers.”

But challenges loom over the industry. Price volatility in scrap metal and other commodities is one major issue. That complicates long-term planning for e-waste firms.

Tampa-based Creative Recycling Systems, with facilities in Georgia and North Carolina, might have been caught up in that problem: The firm, one of the largest e-waste companies in the region, filed a notice with state officials May 28 that it plans to lay off 74 employees by Aug. 10. The company, in the notice, says unforeseen business circumstances partially led to the layoffs. Creative Recycling Officials couldn't be reached for comment.

Even Sims, the industry giant, isn't immune to the sector's potential instability. The firm closed a Dallas facility in May and a New Jersey location earlier in June, according to E-Scrap News, an industry trade publication. Sims officials say the closures are part of a consolidation effort.

Barry Shevlin, CEO of Oldsmar-based Vology, an IT and technology refurbishing firm, has seen some of the challenges in e-waste. Vology works with several Tampa area e-waste firms, says Shevlin, and 40% of the firm's $130 million in 2013 sales came from selling refurbished equipment and hardware. Shevlin, the Business Observer's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008, says another issue in e-waste is finding enough clients to make the business work long-term.

Says Shevlin: “It's a very difficult business to scale.”

On her own
Monahan addresses that issue head-on at M-PowerTech. She seeks to acquire a firm that could both help her scale quickly and add at least a dozen employees. One deal in particular is in the final stages, but Monahan declines to comment on it due to confidentiality agreements.

Monahan says M-PowerTech has other competitive advantages. She says the firm uses “superior technology” that wipes data beyond forensic reconstruction. Another unique offering, says Monahan, is the firm's indemnification guarantee. The company offers clients a two-step process that takes liability for equipment away from the customer and places it with M-PowerTech.

“Most recyclers will not do this,” says Monahan, “and, most importantly, will not put it in writing, which we do at time of pick-up.”  

That kind of nimble and customer-service centric approach takes Monahan back to her days in sales. She never got to full-time sales from her receptionist gig back in Colorado, but she took her experience to an entry-level sales job at Hewlett-Packard. She worked for HP in Colorado and later moved to Fort Lauderdale, where she was a field sales director. After a stint in New York City with ASI System Integration, a large IT firm, Monahan moved back to Florida in 2010.

Then she decided to venture out on her own — though she never saw herself being at the helm of her own business. She is, after all, someone who literally said “oh crap” out loud the first day her company opened, on Jan. 3, 2011, when she realized she had to make some sales. At the time, Monahan and her husband had two daughters under 5 years old and a third baby girl on the way.
Looking back, Monahan says starting her own business was both stressful and liberating; nerve-wracking and exciting.

“I was brought up to work for someone else. My dad was a hard worker but not much of an entrepreneur,” Monahan says. “The first step was the longest step.”

Powerful Tips
Miranda Monahan founded her own business, M-PowerTech, in 2011 after a decade in sales for big technology firms. Here are some lessons Monahan learned in her first three years:

Avoid debt: Monahan says this is especially true in e-waste and e-recycling. Says Monahan: “In our industry we have seen the biggest and best quickly go out of business because they borrowed money and were not able to pay it back.”

Watch the industry: Projecting trends in e-waste has helped Monahan manage the firm, both day to day and long-term. “Be able to scale up or down quickly,” Monahan says, “to acclimate to the economic climate or peaks and valleys in sales.”

Hire well: M-PowerTech has six employees. “Surround yourself with people you can trust,” says Monahan. “You're only as good as your people, so be good to them.”

Executive Summary
Company. M-PowerTech Industry. Electronic waste and recycling Key. Niche-focused firms are growing fast in the industry.