Performance Packaging: Meeting Customer Needs for Lasting Relationships

Performance Packaging offers quality packaging and shipping supplies, facility and warehouse supplies, and packaging equipment, but the greater Houston-based business has truly made its mark in the past decade by building lasting relationships with its loyal customers.

“Yes, we are a packaging and facility supply distributor, but what we really do is form consultative relationships with our customers,” says Performance Packaging owner Morty Chambers. “At the end of the day, we are a solutions provider.”

Saving customers time, money, and resources is not just a marketing slogan for Performance Packaging but the lens through which they conduct their business, and it starts with personal relationships with customers.

“Morty and his team treat their customers as if they were family. Lots of companies claim to but Performance Packaging truly does take the time to know their customers and their needs,” writes one customer in a Google review.

Performance Package’s hands-on approach and old-school handshake mentality allow the company to establish long-term relationships that help them design product and service solutions that help their customers succeed.

In essence, customers, such as insulated metal panels manufacturer Green Span Profiles, become partners.

“Green Span Profiles has been a partner with Performance Packaging for 10 years. Their customer service is second to none,” says William Cone, operations of transportation for Green Span Profiles. “Performance Packaging is reliable and honest and operates with integrity. The group will explain everything clearly and will find the right option for you. We are blessed that we have aligned ourselves with Performance Packaging.”

Middleman that Benefits Both Packaging Manufacturers and End Users

It makes sense that Performance Packaging is all about building relationships because their role as middleman is to play matchmaker to meet both the needs of packaging manufacturers and end users.

“Packaging manufacturers work through distributors like Performance Packaging and not directly to end users,” explains Chambers. “This allows them to focus on what they do best, manufacturing, and they also get a de facto sales force as distributors like Performance Packaging get their product to the end user.”

In this important middleman role, Performance Packaging carries a wide range of products from packaging supplies to facilities supplies to general warehouse supplies to personal protection equipment (PPE).

While you can order everything from poly wrap to paper towels to toilet paper from Performance Packaging, their main business is finding packaging product solutions for customers from specific sizes to specific customization to specific applications.

“When we first meet a customer, we want to understand their goals, and then help them reach them,” says Chambers. “We want to build a winning plan for their business and that starts with communication.”

How Communication is Key to Understanding Customers

If Performance Packaging has a secret recipe, it’s not locked away in a vault like Coca-Cola’s formula, but Chambers will tell you that communication is key to understanding his customer’s needs.

 “Communication is critical. I believe in a high level of communication – good, bad, and everything in between!” says Chambers. “We want to build super relationships with the owners of companies we work with, and bring value to their enterprises, and that starts with communication.”

Performance Packaging representatives, including Chambers, are on-site every week with customers, assessing their packaging and supplies needs.

The communication, however, can be almost daily in whatever form works best for the customer: text, phone call, email, or whatever other means.

“If the news is good … then great!” explains Chambers. “But if the news is bad, then we tell them – we want to be proactive in our relationships. The last thing you want is to let issues that arise be a surprise to customers. We pride ourselves on contingency plans and workarounds so bad news usually translates to how we will problem-solve an issue so that we can keep customers happy by delivering on our commitments.”

The Steps to Putting a Winning Packaging System in Place

Chambers was perfectly placed to devise a winning packaging system as he spent his previous work life climbing the corporate ladder for a company where he learned the ropes from distribution to logistics to transportation to store operations to e-commerce.

“In my “previous life” my day-to-day concern was "how can we move products to retail stores". And "how can we make sure that they have what they need when it is needed",” says Chambers.

In his role, Chambers set a system in place to generate orders, keep stores stocked, and, along the way, he worked closely with packaging distributors for decades. 

All the lessons he learned, he put to use in designing how Performance Packaging would work with customers.

“We decided to create a system like that we used in the retail world so that customers would always have products then they needed them,” says Chambers. “That’s the saving time part, that’s the saving money part.”

Chambers understands why packaging is not an afterthought but integral to the success of businesses.

“If they run out of packaging, then they can’t ship, and that means they can’t invoice, and that is a domino effect,” says Chambers.

At its core, Performance Packaging system relies on the following initial steps:

• Learn what packaging products the customers use.
• Learn how much of the packaging products the customers use.
• Learn how the customer uses the packaging products.
• Work with the packaging manufacturers to get products in Performance Packaging’s stock to have them available for clients when they are needed.

How Just-in-Time Model and Inventory Management Lead to Cost Savings

Cost savings for customers come from Performance Packaging’s just-in-time model and inventory management tools.

“We buy in bulk quantities – saving the customers on space as they do not have to stock the products in their warehouses, and it saves the customers on cash flow what normally might be tied up in securing products,” explains Chambers. “We step in the middle, buy in bulk, and the customer gets the savings because of bulk pricing.”

Performance Packaging’s role also helps reduce lead times for customers as they do not have to wait for packaging manufacturing products.

“We manage inventory in our warehouse, basically on a just-in-time business model,” says Chambers.

Performance Packaging, with customers like Green Span Profiles, will go to their location every week with inventory sheets in hand, walking the plant and warehouse, to do a true packaging product count.

“We will work with our partners to get a 3-week out product schedule plan which will allow us to order and ship products to them on a weekly basis,” says Chambers. “We save them time because they don’t have to go around checking on supplies.”

Chambers' previous corporate experience taught him that the employee in the warehouse who grabs the last box of tape or stretch wrap often forgets to tell someone, so Performance Packaging is perfectly happy to get the counts right.

Performance Packaging also invested in a high-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) system six years ago that helps them keep customers stocked at the right levels.

The ERP system includes inventory management tools that help with:

• Inventory visibility.
• Smart ordering system.
• Demand planning.
• Historical data.

“We invested in this software so that we can be better positioned to help keep our customers in business,” says Chambers.

Performance Packaging: Efficiency and Effectiveness

What’s the bottom line? Chambers circles back to two words: efficiency and effectiveness

“It starts with price competitiveness. We are not the cheapest solution, but we are not out of line with the market. We want our pricing to be competitive,” says Chambers.

Besides price competitiveness, the foundation for being efficient and effective is built on a deep understanding of what customers do and need, and then the ability to design solutions to meet those needs.

“To develop a very solid relationship with customers you must learn, hear, and understand what they do,” says Chambers. “Once we know their challengers, we can design solutions for their applications.”

Finally, planning is great, but problem-solving is crucial to make a packaging distributor business work and Chambers prides his business on its ability to respond to setbacks and supply chain issues.

Chambers, who has been known to jump off a roller coaster on a family vacation to a conference call with a client on a pressing issue, says the key is to have good relationships with manufacturers of their supplies.

Covid-19 and the resulting supply chain snafus – where normal 2-week lead times became 12 weeks -- taught Performance Packaging the value of alternative solutions and suppliers for unexpected events.

“For example, when it comes to custom corrugated boxes, we have four different manufacturers and each does something that the others don’t do,” says Chambers. “We stay competitive with our pricing by using different manufacturers or suppliers.”

Already in 2024, Performance Packaging helped customers save money on pricing when they became aware in January of an impending price change in the market.

“In early January 2024 the corrugated box industry forecasted 8-14% price increase to become effective in March & April, in late January we had advance notice and passed along the information to customers who could choose to stock up at lower prices. That’s a competitive advantage we pass along to our customers,” says Chambers.

Customers aren’t surprised that Performance Packaging continues to ensure they have the products that they need at competitive prices, delivered accurately and on time.

“I consider Performance Packaging to be the complete ‘concierge’ partner for all your packaging needs. Their personalized service and devotion to truly understanding the intricacies of your business are unmatched. We count on them to help with all of our packaging needs and have never tasked them with a project they seemingly couldn’t handle,” says Andrew Sanchez, Slow Dough Bread Co.

Reach out to Performance Packaging today for custom packaging design and testing, managed inventory, and logistics programs, that can help your business succeed with high-quality products and elevated services.