MONSTER BUSINESS

How a determined entrepreneur with a keen eye
lit a fuse for success

By PHIL FAVORITE
The Portland Entrepreneur

When he's talking business, Brian Corekin is passionate, excitable and admittedly can come off as a little kooky.

But he's always cool enough to keep his eye on the ball, a lesson learned from Entrepreneurship 101. That's why he keeps investing in his business while his competitors in the salvaged electrical parts business are circling their wagons.

The jovial 56-year-old is the founder of Monster Electrical, a Southeast Portland company that salvages and reconditions industrial electrical parts to sell to a customer in a "need-it-now" scenario.

Paper mills, steel mills, utilities and just about any other type of manufacturer using high- and medium-voltage electrical equipment come to Monster when they're in a pinch and need parts to keep their operations up and running.

Despite the economic downturn of the past few years, the company continues to post substantial revenue gains, growing about 30 percent on average per year, from $1.7 million in 2006 to about $3.7 million in 2009.

The key to that success? Corekin uses a measured approach to keep his shelves stocked but his costs down.

"You have to be able to stock like a lunatic," he said. "But I can't spend like a lunatic. In business today inventory is something that you're supposed to turn many times. But I look at it as an investment."

His success stems from a willingness to stock thousands of industrial-size fuses and other parts salvaged from high-voltage electrical equipment, while most manufacturers and distributors are paring back their stock to save on the expense.

With an experienced eye and the scrappiness of a thrift-store bargain hunter, Corekin acquires his parts at salvage sales and auctions nationwide. He also frequently is contacted by sellers who find his company on the Internet. The parts are shipped to Monster's Portland warehouses, where they're examined, tested, reconditioned if necessary, and stocked.

His vast inventory resides on a data base that's searchable on the Internet, and with the advancement of overnight delivery, Corekin found himself in a perfect storm for sales success.

"If you have the components that are needed when people have to have them, and the manufacturer is weeks away from being able to deliver, you're going to be in the catbird's seat," he said. "A fuse is one of those things. People don't think of the fuse they're going to need until they're in the dark."

When a client contacts Monster by phone, they're likely to find an upbeat, enthusiastic and helpful person on the other end of the line. That's no coincidence.

"In most cases, employees get their energy from their leader, and it's no different here," said Darrell Lewis, who joined Monster Electrical in a marketing role late last year and is one of the company's 14 employees. "Brian has handpicked people because of their attitude."

Corekin learned the after-market electrical components business working for an electrical supply company in California. Looking to be closer to family in Seattle, he moved with his wife, Kim, and first son, Kyle, to Portland in 1996, and started into the business "on a shoe string."

He said a particular auction at a Ketchikan, Alaska, pulp mill served him well despite getting his nose-bloodied by a particularly crafty competitor.

"I flew up there at the cost of about $1,000," Corekin recalled. "I walked the mill for days. I came back and put a plan together. I flew up again for the auction with an idea of what was there. As soon as I get there, I see this yellow tape around the things that aren't being sold. If you had taken my list of things I wanted, it's as if they walked around the plant with my list and put a yellow ribbon around every one of the items."

Discouraged, Corekin stuck around to pick up what he could, but soon found himself substantially outbid on anything he was interested in by a poker-faced competitor Corekin calls "Archie."

"I went up to him and said, 'OK, it worked. I'm not gonna bid anymore. Have a great day. It's not worth my time.' "

But Corekin decided to stay with it, and after a while, when several other competitors had left the auction, the auctioneer decided to take the yellow tape from some of the things he wanted to buy. And not long after that, "Archie finally let me buy something."

"So we get into this room full of equipment, and the first thing I buy, they have it marked wrong," Corekin said. "They have it marked as a welder; it's actually a tester worth thousands of dollars. I buy it for $100.

"There were transformers in there with electrical equipment attached, times seven or eight. I bought the whole room for a song. It was worth many times more than what I paid. That was the first real 'Wow!' of my business -- what took me my original investment of $25,000 to something worth a whole lot more."

The lessons he learned were just as valuable.

"A couple of things happened that day," Corekin said. "I didn't give up. I did my homework ahead of time, and therefore I knew where stuff was and knew its value. I knew that if the opportunities were put in front of me, I'd be able to take advantage of them because I had done the homework."

****

Corekin pulls his SUV up to one of the many nondescript warehouses visible from the overpass near Southeast Holgate Boulevard and 26th Avenue. He opens a creaky entry door, revealing shelves and shelves of used parts salvaged from heavy machinery.

Light streams through windows that line the top of the warehouse on a rare sunny winter day in Portland.

"I love this place. When I first saw it, I knew we had to move in here," Corekin said.

Spending some time with him, you start to think there are no cloudy days in Corekin's world. A self-described optimist, Corekin has made a living in dusty old machine parts, seeing the possibilities.

"I want to let any future entrepreneur know that you don't have to have all the answers," he said. "You just have to be willing to find out things and have he ability to know where to search to find the answers. You want to take the information that you've deciphered so you can put yourself in the right place at the right time."

Even if you come off as a little kooky.

© 2010, Favorite Media Co.