'Success does not rest on one particular person'

Tera Vazquez has guided Guy Brown to strong growth, but doesn't see the economy recovering fully until 2011 [From our print edition featured in Monday's City Paper]

Email | Print By William Williams

Maria Teresa “Tera” Vazquez co-founded Brentwood-based Guy Brown Products in 1999. She serves as the president of the company, which focuses on office and medical supplies and recently marked another year on the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies. The company’s revenues have grown from about $43 million in 2004 to $206 million last year.

A native of Peru, Vazquez recently touched base with Post news correspondent William Williams to discuss her company.

Why concentrate on office and medical products?

We are a nationwide company that provides business solutions by supplying our customers with office products, medical supplies, remanufactured toner and ink jet cartridges, and promotional marketing products. My background started with imaging supplies. We started with toner cartridges and saw an opportunity to expand.

Shortly after its formation in 1999, Guy Brown joined the Tennessee Minority Supplier Development Council and other similar organizations. How has that helped the company?

The TMSDC was the catalyst for our success. You must be the best at what you do in order to effectively compete, but having a supporter like Cheri Henderson (TMSDC’s executive director) has definitively made a difference.

What percentage of your customers are government entities? When it started, Guy Brown primarily focused on the public sector, correct?

Over 90 percent of our customers are in the private sector. We are not in Alaska but essentially have clients everywhere else in the country. Our first customer was the City of Los Angeles, and we still have them as customers buying our remanufactured toner line.

On that theme, your work with the City of Los Angeles involved significant product testing. Your thoughts?

Absolutely. Ten years ago, it was not popular being green. Thus, in order to convince someone that it made economic sense to buy remanufactured toner cartridges, we had to prove that they worked as good as the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) or original cartridge.

Do you consider Guy Brown, given its recycling theme, a “green business?”

No, not yet in terms of being fully green. Our business plan is leading us in that direction. We do everything we can internally to be green and our employees embrace that even in their homes. In a general sense, we are a green business.

Your company uses a lot of digital sales techniques to minimize paper usage. How does that work?

“Change” is always a difficult process, but we have had good success. Our customers are welcoming the digital era. We have in the last year and a half or so probably reduced our paper usage by 40 to 50 percent.

How has the recession impacted your business?

We have felt it like most businesses, but we have kept our focus. This year is not going to be stellar, but we should do OK. We might see a 10 to 15 percent drop in revenues compared to the numbers for the previous year.

The economy is basically why we’re seeing the decrease. I don’t expect a complete turnaround in 2010, but I do foresee consumer confidence improving.

Guy Brown is government-certified in part because of its minority ownership. How is the company structured and how does it do business?

I have two business partners: Jay Chawan and Bappa Mukherji. Each of us owns 33.3 percent of the company. I am a firm believer that success does not rest on one particular person. It takes the vision of all three partners. As to financials, we have generally seen annual revenue growth of at least 25 percent.