Editor's Letter: A State of Independence

Business sectors in North America vary in all sorts of ways, including by the average size of the companies in that sector and in the type of ownership structure most commonly found.

For its 2011 State of the RIM Industry Report, Storage & Destruction Business received survey responses from some 259 information management and destruction companies on a variety of topics, including the size of their companies and the ownership structure.

Only 9 percent of those responding replied on behalf of publicly owned companies, with 91 percent describing their company ownership structure as either private or as a family business.

Family businesses and privately held companies can still grow to a substantial size, in the information management and destruction business or in any sector.

But a healthy percentage of the respondents to our survey also indicated they operated from just one location. Slightly more than 60 percent of respondents replied on behalf of companies with just one location, and another 24 percent represented companies with two or three locations.

A different question on revenue yielded a wider variety of answers, indicating that some smaller companies either offer a wider variety of services, have been in place longer to build their businesses or have tapped into a bigger regional market. Nonetheless, more than 33 percent of companies responding reported revenue of $500,000 or less.

The numbers reinforce what an observer of the information destruction and management industries can sense when attending industry events or otherwise reporting on the industry: the RIM sector continues to attract entrepreneurs who wish to be their own bosses while providing a critical service to a local or regional market.

The sector also has attracted global and national companies with economies-of-scale models they bring to multiple cities and regions. These companies have, in several cases, built solid national business models. But their existence has by no means caused the entrepreneurs to abandon ship (or, more appropriately, abandon their shredding or collection trucks).

The finding is one of several intriguing insights to be gained when examining the 2011 State of the RIM Industry Report, which was originally published as part of the January/February 2011 edition of Storage & Destruction Business.

The research and reporting effort, spearheaded by SDB Editor DeAnne Toto, culminated in an information-packed 12-page report sponsored by EZ Shred, Jake, Connor & Crew and Vecoplan.

If you missed the 2011 State of the RIM Industry Report in its original form but would like to benefit from the collection of information presented, I encourage you to go to the SDB website at http://www.sdbmagazine.com/FileUploads/file/2011SOI_SDB-links.pdf to access a PDF of the full report.