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He's got a big box business

Marty Metro owns company that resells old cardboard, started an industry.

By Samantha Gonzaga
Staff writer

LONG BEACH — Marty Metro's mantra is to rescue, reuse and recycle cardboard boxes. And, when there's time, he stops to plant a tree.

Four years ago, Metro didn't just found a company with UsedCardboardBoxes.com he created an industry.

Recalling the time-consuming task of finding cardboard boxes for moving, or the expense of purchasing new ones, he paired environmentalism and entrepreneurship with his background in systems technology and corporate consulting.

"We saw just an instant amount of value in the cardboard boxes being thrown away by corporate America," said Metro. "If we put an infrastructure together, we can capture some of the value and reapply it, because the reality is that people reuse sports equipment and cars. And here you have a commodity considered trash, yet at the same time you have millions of people in the country looking for that trash."

UsedCardboardBoxes.com's solution to reducing moving costs is to "rescue' packing boxes retail companies don't want from trash bins. Consumers can buy or resell their own used cardboard boxes, which are sold for a fraction of the price.

Partnerships with retail companies like Guess?, Waldenbooks, Borders Books and Music and American Apparel Inc. keep the company warehouses in Long Beach, Los Angeles, Pomona and Tampa, Fla., stocked with undamaged boxes. The boxes range from 1 to 6 cubic feet.

One of the ingenuities of the business is its technology infrastructure, said Ben Lawson, the branch manager at the store at 620 Pacific Ave. in downtown Long Beach.

Instead of fully relying on locations to generate business, the company Web site gives customers the option of having the boxes delivered to their homes within 24 hours. ZIP code validation technology enables the company to determine if requests can be met by UsedCardboardBoxes.com's warehouses.

Orders that fall outside the coverage area are connected to the the site's "box exchange' engine, which matches them with companies or individuals looking to get rid of used boxes.

Boxes can be bought individually they start at 50 cents or in packages. The one-to two-bedroom moving bundle begins at $65, which comes with 45 boxes, a box-cutter, Sharpie marker, tape and bubble wrap.

Need something sturdier than boxes? For the same cost of buying the boxes, customers can rent Rubbermaid storage bins. These too, can be delivered.

The response?

"Phenomenal," Metro said. "We have been widely well-received. We have beyond 100 percent satisfaction. People love not only what we do, they tell us they are angry for not knowing about us before. Literally, people walk into our outlets with a smile and say, 'Thank goodness I found you guys."

Citing company policy, Metro did release sales figures.

The three-month-old Long Beach branch is not as busy as its Los Angeles counterpart, but the summer and end of each month has seen promising business, Lawson said.

"It's going great," said Lawson, who is also the company's environmental coordinator. "The best thing about this business is that you've got to get them at the right time of their life."

A portion of the sales have gone toward tree-planting, Metro said. The company donates to Los Angeles-based TreePeople, an environmental awareness group whose programs include tree-planting in schools, parks and shopping centers.

For information, call (888) 269-3788 or log on to http://UsedCardboardBoxes.com