Badge of honor

SweetSpot
Bonitas International/BooJee Beads

Why 2016 is important: Company aims for a big boost in global sales.

Kim Martinez is a big fan of Tervis, the Venice-based company that turned a cup into a multimillion-dollar enterprise with 1,000 employees.

But not merely because of its drinkware.

Martinez admires the firm's ability to innovate, adapt and find new markets and niches. She would like to see her company, Bonitas International, grow like Tervis. Bonitas is the parent entity of BooJee Beads, a line of fashion-forward lanyards, necklaces and other accessories for holding ID badges. BooJee Beads are in at least 7,000 independent boutiques and gift stores nationwide, in addition to Amazon and other websites.

“We watch Tervis,” says Martinez, who sent a cold-call email a decade ago to the company's then-CEO, Laura Spencer, asking to meet for lunch. “We sort of try to follow them.”

BooJee Beads will soon have its own followers if it keeps up its torrid pace. Annual sales increased 65% from 2011 to 2014, to $3.5 million, and the firm made the Inc. 5000 list for fast growth three of the last four years. Sales will likely surpass $5.5 million in 2015, says Martinez, and she projects at least 30% growth in 2016.

The next year is also an important transition year for the firm. For starters, it's adding 15,000 square feet to its production and operations facility in Newbury, Ohio, outside Cleveland. Some of that new space will go toward supporting a rapid increase in big-box orders.

Martinez runs the company from her Sarasota home but travels to Ohio to oversee operations and handle issues. “We won't always compete on price,” says Martinez. “So to win we have to be more innovative than the competition.”

The company also plans to introduce several new products in 2016, including a jewelry line that adds some fashion sparkle to wearable fitness trackers. Products like that, says Martinez, fit the company's mission to help women meld pretty with purpose. “We try to stay in the middle of functional to fabulous,” she says. “That really works for us.”

Another big push in 2016: more global sales. The strategy there is to attend multiple trade shows overseas. But beyond a simple booth and a plea for customers, the trade shows Martinez targets are advanced sales conferences, where there's a higher-than-normal entry fee. For that, Martinez expects to get in front of a group of serious fashion and gift industry buyers. “It's more expensive with the first stroke of the check,” says Martinez, “but there is a better return on investment.”

Martinez, somewhat of an accidental entrepreneur, founded the company in 2002. She was an executive for Philadelphia-based Rosenbluth Travel, but was laid off in the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn. Then, at a family Christmas party in Ohio, she saw a funky decorated ID badge her sister-in-law wore for a job as a pediatric nurse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Martinez literally wrote up an idea for an ID badge business on the back of a cocktail napkin that night. The name BooJee was a nickname for Martinez' youngest son.
More than a decade later, Martinez aims not only to manage the growth of the company, but to foster a customer-service-is-everything culture.

“We do what we say we are going to do,” she says. “From the time the phone rings to the time the end product goes out the door we are flawless.”

Follow Mark Gordon on Twitter @markigordon