How to Select Your Cleaning Supplier with Aaron Glazar

Action Unlimited Story: "Our founder, Alan Glazar, joined the Marine Corps at age 17. Wounded in Vietnam, the Marine Corps trained him in heating and cooling where he worked for the remainder of his service. While he didn’t enjoy working on HVAC systems, it exposed him to mechanical skills and a field where he was involved in inspections, repairs, quality control, and maintenance. After leaving the military, he became a janitor for a company that distributed cleaning supplies. His responsibilities quickly expanded from sweeping floors to making coffee, adding up invoices, and calculating daily profits. One day the owner said, “Kid, I want you to go out and sell.” That day Alan discovered his calling—helping customers. And boy was he good at it. The competition soon noticed and another company grabbed him. Throughout his time at the company, Alan rose to fill the shoes of general manager, purchasing manager, and sales manager before eventually running the company as the right hand for the owner.  In 1982, Alan founded Action Paper & Chemical Co, a company founded with the mindset of a salesman on the street with a simple guarantee: 100% Customer satisfACTION! As time progressed and our product line expanded, a name change was necessary. Today, as Action Unlimited Resources, we are still family-owned and operated and we continue to handle customer needs with a sense of urgency – just as Alan founded the company.

Today, Alan's son Aaron runs the company. They are located just over an hour away from me in Wilimington, DE. In early 2022, I was introduced to a company sales rep, Lynda OLear through one of my local networking friends. I had never heard of Action Unlimited and therefore was not aware of the size and scope of their operation. I asked my friend and Smart Cleaning School guest Kelly Jones about Action. She was emphatic. "They are a great company! I use them personally for all of my supplies. In fact, they are currently making me a product." A few months later, I made arrangements for a site tour or Action and a chance to meet Kelly in person for the first time. It was a great visit. Company rep Becky Eppig was my personal tour guide. She walked Kelly and I around the warehouse and offices at Action. I was very impressed with the operation. The highlight was meeting company CEO Aaron Glazar. He was enthusiastic about his company and had a magnetic personality. I definitely wanted to get Aaron on the podcast to promote his company and, more broadly, to educate cleaning company owners on the chemical supply industry. Aaron gracefully accepted.

Action Unlimited Resources is the recipient of the following major awards:

• Marvin S. Gilman Superstars in Business Award (August 2022)- The Delaware State Chamber of Commerce honors Delaware businesses each year for displaying the highest ethical standards and their model approaches to business and management. Action was one of 4 businesses named in 2022.
• Inc 5000 Award (2002) - This ranks all privately held companies by overall revenue growth over a three-year period. Action ranked #4,689 with a revenue growth of 91%.
• Great Place to Work 2022 - This certification recognizes workplaces that give all employees a consistent positive experience.

This interview with Aaron Glazar takes us into his background, heart, and vision for the company. He also shares the overal industry outlook so anyone in the cleaning industry can make better choices where to buy their supplies.

Founding Success Principles & Quotables from the Interview:

• Alan always told Aaron. "Work hard you eat good."
• "Never make a decision on whether you're good at something or like something until you learn how to do it."
• "Persistence and grit is one of the foundations and core values in our organization. It's our ability to persist when it's not easy." Persistence is a highly ranked characteristic they hire for.
• Aaron's go-to books are: "Think & Grow Rich", "Good to Great", and "Blue Ocean"
• "Integrity is paramount. What you don't see is how integrity plays out versus something that is written on the core values. High level of integrity can be conflicting with what is best for business today."
• "Core values is not defining what you aspire to. If they're core, they're there. Its discovering what they are. Persistence and grit rose to the surface for Action."
• Action goes above supplying products that cleaning companies and facilities need. They look for the challenges of the business and use their resources of products, technology, training, and service to create solutions to these challenges.
• They used to run Action Academy to train on different areas. They found that they didn't need to invest into in-depth training because the market didn't demand it. They have moved to customize education based on individual challenges. They shifted from broad training to specific deep customized training.
• "Instead of asking why wouldn't they buy this from us, I'd ask why would they buy from us? This changed my perspective."

The Chemical Supply Industry:

• Mergers and acquisitions are the current power move in the cleaning supplier industry. Companies are growing bigger buy buying other companies. This causes culture shock to employees and customer service shock to the customers.
• Chemical supply companies mainly started out local and niched in areas that were needed at the time going back over 50 years. These companies evolved with their customer relationships to supply what was needed at the time.
• As the volume of product offered grew and the size of corporations grew, the supplier industry saw the opportunity for the large all-in-one model. Janitorial supply has been bolted onto a lot of large supply companies. This is the new model versus the local model years ago. Action works hard to keep the local feel, yet to appeal to a broader region.
• The trend of M&A mixed with the large, corporate bolt-on of janitorial has created a significant reduction in the ratio of janitorial supply companies to janitorial companies. There are far less than there use to be as a result and most cleaning companies are forced to buy from large companies that don't have the specific janitorial knowledge. That was lost in the M&A process.
• Aaron has seen that the companies that hyper focus on cost and how to save on supplies will lose out on revenue. It's the opportunity cost associated. These are not Action's customers. Action takes the needs of the company and finds a solution that hits their goals. Price is included. Action always offers a competitive price, but it's not always the lowest price. This allows the business to focus on growing. The cost focused customers will go to the Amazons and other large corporate national entities.
• Action started in 1982 and will remain with a continuation plan for a long time. If you would like a cleaning supply partner that will be your go-to for years to come, Action is a great option.
• The future of the cleaning industry is going to be lead by technology and automation. Action is excited to stay ahead of the trends and help cleaning companies win.

To connect with Action Unlimited Resources, go to their website, https://www.actioncleanup.com/.