From its beginning of buying and selling office supplies from a supply closet to its current status as a multi-million dollar business, SD Pacific has built its business around being a respectable broker in the office-equipment consumables market. SD Pacific buys surplus printers, copiers, fax supplies and some bulk toner. The company operates mainly in consumables but no small parts, connecting liquidators with buyers from coast to coast. The company has a primary market to suppliers, brokers and small and medium-sized wholesalers throughout the United States. However, there are also international sales, which are made through United States brokers who deal with international trade around the world. "My product is more liquidation." said Keith Harris, CEO of SD Pacific, Irvine, Calif., "... I am a liquidator."
             Harris and his partner, Henry Sun, began their venture together after they had both been working for a surplus liquidation company; Harris for 14 months and Sun for four. Sun was Harris' warehouseman when Harris started their new company but later became his partner.

Storage closet beginnings
             SD Pacific started in a subleased storage closet of a freight-forwarding facility in southern San Francisco behind the San Francisco Airport in 1988. Harris says he and his Sun started their business by working in a 12 by 12 foot room crowded with paper, forms and supplies, their telephone and a computer. "People would interrupt us coming in to get pencils," Harris said. He describes their first year as a very challenging one. When the company started, no bank would talk to them, Harris said. "We really celebrated when we received word of the first credit line for which we were approved," remarked Harris, "…$15,000 from the Bank of America." He said the first year in business, they did $678,000 in gross sales but 10 percent of it was bad debt. Because of this, the company almost went out of business several times the first year but ultimately survived. "I hung onto that 'Trust Keith Harris' mantra and stayed with it," explained Harris. It is fortunate that they persevered. Last year the company had $3.1 million in gross sales revenue. The company, located in Irvine, CA, now works with 2,300 vendors and expects to break the $5 million figure this year. "Already in the first quarter of 2001, we have met our expectations," said Harris. " In fact, we met our goal for the first four months. We'll see after the next month if we meet the $2.5 million (figure projected for the first half of 2001)."

'Trust Keith Harris'
             One of the most prominent parts of the company is the "Trust Keith Harris" slogan. It is a slogan pervasive throughout the company and recognized throughout the industry. Company information, advertisements and their Website include the slogan. Their Website opens with "Trust Keith Harris" and Harris' face bobbing across the surplustoner.com homepage with the slogan. On one of their Web pages is a whimsical display of "advertisements" that include everyone from television's Judge Judy to Pope John Paul II. There is a message in the slogan, however, that is paramount. "I am the company," Harris said. "SD Pacific is not the company. People have to remember that." The slogan is directed to ward making Harris' name as familiar as a household word. "I'd love to have my name bantered around like I was a friend of the family," he added.

Company composition
               SD Pacific has 16 employees in their warehouse and office, which occupies 13,000 square feet in Irvine, CA. "I consider myself the number one liquidator of surplus supplies in the United States," stated Harris. SD Pacific also does business in Canada and Mexico but in Mexico, the operation is conducted mostly through agents. SD Pacific also conducts business internationally. Harris says he has people throughout the United States who are domestic brokers who broker products overseas. Ninety percent of SD Pacific's business is wholesale, with a small retail market, which is only in the area of toners for Kodak and Xerox high-speed supplies. "The company has about a 60 percent digital and 40 percent analog makeup of companies who work in the copier consumables," he said. In addition to the traditional surplus supplies market, SD Pacific also does some work with liquidating supplies in the reprographic, large-format area of the imaging industry. "If it goes through a machine and prints on paper, I'll sell it," Harris noted.

Staying different from the rest
              "In order to stay in business," stated Harris, "all you need to have is a sound business plan, back it up, make sure you don't lose money and have good, qualified employees." His pricing strategy is simple: "I sell on one thing only. I sell on price." Harris is seeing more and more competition. He explained, "More and more people who find themselves without jobs are becoming brokers in this business." He also sees a lot of people selling business-to-business on the World Wide Web. While SD Pacific has an informative site at http://www.surplustoner.com and includes an offer to buy surplus products on the Web, Harris steadfastly noted, "I won't sell on the Web - ever."

Company in technology-drenched Irvine
                 The company and its 16 employees moved into its present quarters in Irvine, CA in May of 2000. Irvine is a technology-drenched city south of Los Angeles established in 1971 and is now the 27th largest city in California with a population of over 150,000 in this rapidly-growing area. This location is an area that is sometimes called the "dot-com" corridor. This summer's predictions of "rolling blackouts" of electrical power in the region have Harris, also, looking for alternatives for electrical power. "I have a note on my desk to buy a Honda generator," Harris said. Amid all this technology, SD Pacific finds time to be a member of the South Orange County Chamber of Commerce and also donates time and money to the Children's Hospital of Orange County and to the local YMCA.

The other slogan
                 There are two other slogans that, while not as prominent as the 'Trust Keith Harris' mantra, are nevertheless part of what Harris is known for. One says, "If Keith Harris doesn't buy it, throw it away." The other says, "Only sell your supplies to me." Harris says that in the liquidated supplies market, he is "here to help everybody." The trust that SD Pacific has built within the industry is that, they will pay what they say they will, and when they promise. Harris says there are not a lot of companies that will go as far as he has in making his commitment to trust.
Contact information:
SD Pacific, 11 Marconi, Suite A, Irvine, CA 92618, Phone: 949.609.0777, Fax: 949.609.0728
Web site: http://www.surplustoner.com e-mail: surplustoner@surplustoner.com

About Neal McChristy:

                 Neal McChristy is a freelance journalist who resides in Pittsburg, Kan. He has worked for an imaging magazine and Web site for five years. Prior to that, he was staff writer at a southeast Kansas daily newspaper for 11 years. He is a 1982 graduate of the William A. White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. He can be reached by e-mail at freelance9@kscable.com