GOOD NEWS FROM THE CII FRONT
For the third time in our seventeen year history we recorded a profitable January. Business was strong into American Samoa and even though it was holiday time in New Zealand and Australia we saw a 20% jump in revenues over 2009. Graham Burford, our VP sales and marketing, has made two trips to Texas and Utah and both yielded new customers. An Australian forwarder customer specializing in oil drilling equipment handed us two substantial projects, some of it being shipped out last month, with more big volumes to follow. Today we are loading a twenty footer of oversize equipment for the Qantas freighter into Sydney.
CII’s Backstage Cargo division received a great start to the year by being awarded the contract to handle Whitney Houston on her world tour which started this week in Seoul, Korea. Pete Lamy was contacted by Ozzie Osbourne’s management on Christmas Day; Kelly was stuck in New York without her passport and she was leaving the following morning for London. With the help of Greg Melissinos, our Eastern Region VP, Kelly was able to make her flight as scheduled. There is no question having Maggie Martinez heading operations in L.A. has led to our Backstage order book never looking so healthy.
Our N.Y. and Atlanta offices despite the impediment caused by the terrible mid-winter weather recorded a healthy start to the year with several large “back to back” shipments. N.Y. is doing so well Pete gave approval to add another senior person to bolster our operations there. Doreen Cuomo, a veteran of the JFK forwarding community, starts with us next week. We have plans in the first quarter to add another person in Atlanta also.
Pete and I feel our customer-base has never looked so strong and even though the average shipment size continues to decline, it is made up by us handling more shipments. Our goal in 2009 was to gain a bigger slice of the shrinking and smaller pie. This approach certainly paid dividends. I believe our greatest achievement in creating strong foundation for a successful 2010 has been becoming a participant in President Obama’s stimulus program. We now have nine new staff added to our operations and all are now in the middle of a comprehensive training program. Our company has the resources to enable us to grow our business. All nine new staff members are super smart but above all possess a great work ethic. We are building a team that is taking us to new heights of business activity when most in our industry are adjusting theirs in the opposite direction to match the “shrinking pie”!
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