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By Kym Reinstadler | MiBiz
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KALAMAZOO — West Michigan companies usually bought boxes, bands and bubble wrap from their respective manufacturers before John and Margaret VanderPloeg opened Ship-Pac Inc. as a one-stop shipping supplier in 1964.

Ship-Pac customers still want convenience, but they need fewer traditional packaging supplies for two reasons:

• The decline in the area’s manufacturing base means less is getting produced.
• The sustainability movement has translated using less packaging into the mainstream.

Kathie VanderPloeg and Andrew Hoekstra diversified Ship-Pac three years ago to serve the growing food processing market in Southwest Michigan. The company also broadened its product lines to be able to sell more to each customer. COURTESY PHOTOS

To grow the business in that climate, Kathie VanderPloeg, the founders’ daughter, took her parents’ example of helping companies make “doing business” a little easier for clients and applied it in more directions.

“We’ve broadened our product lines so we have more to sell our customers,” said VanderPloeg, who bought Ship-Pac when her parents retired in 2000. “New lines we’ve added also help us attract new customers.”

With packaging sales to manufacturers declining, seven years ago, Ship-Pac added janitorial supplies and packaging equipment parts to bolster sales.

That helped, but VanderPloeg hoped to “recession-proof” the company even more three years ago by branching into Southwest Michigan’s growing food processing market.

While Ship-Pac had long supplied shrink wraps, tapes and bands to bind pallets of foods processed in West Michigan and northern Indiana, in the new endeavor the company began supplying containers that touch the food itself.

Many of those containers are reusable, recyclable or biodegradable and designed by Ship-Pac’s own packaging engineers.

Environmentally friendly packaging is what knowledgable consumers prefer and what an increasing number of recycling regulations require, she said.

“We expanded into food because food businesses stay put, meaning they don’t get out-sourced overseas,” VanderPloeg said. “We’re in a good growing region and processing region. Food may be the No. 1 recession-proof business.”

Ship-Pac’s service sector is also growing. An increasing number of clients have the company’s specialists manage their on-site inventory so materials are on hand only when needed.

Packaging supply still accounts for 85 percent of Ship-Pac’s $25 million in annual business, but diversifying has helped make revenues more stable, VanderPloeg said.

Sales to automotive companies are also bounding back nicely, she said.

Since the dreariest days of the recession in the fall of 2008, Ship-Pac’s sales through the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011 improved 15 percent.

The company currently employs 55 people at its three locations: sales offices and warehouses in Kalamazoo and Elkhart, Ind., and a sales office in Grand Rapids.

“Our customers are very focused on reducing costs, which includes how much time their people spend managing segments of their business,” VanderPloeg said.

It seems like a long way from where the company started — providing customers with a single source to buy packaging supplies — but in some respects it’s not that different, VanderPloeg said.

VanderPloeg’s parents remain interested in the company, but not active.

She operates Ship-Pac with her husband, Andrew Hoekstra, who had a long career in sales at the Howard Miller Clock Company of Zeeland.

The couple’s four adult children are all pursuing other careers, but VanderPloeg said she is yet to be convinced that Ship-Pac won’t continue as a family-run business long into the future.

After all, she didn’t expect to end up in the family business at first. Only after earning a degree in music education from Kalamazoo College did she decide to pursue a career at Ship-Pac in 1976. She said she has great respect for teachers and suspected she would not make a great one.

VanderPloeg, who had worked at Ship-Pac during summers through college, later returned to college to take business courses.

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• andrew hoekstra
• kalamazoo
• kathie vanderploeg
• ship pac