"American Dreamers"-Percy Marchand, Owner, Marchand Ink
Monday, January 21, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: We now turn our focus to minority entrepreneurial experience. We teamed up with "Black Enterprise Magazine" for our series "American Dreamers." It looks at some young entrepreneurs living the dream of business ownership. We begin in New Orleans with Percy Marchand. His full service printing business opened just days ahead of hurricane Katrina's unexpected devastation. But as Jeff Yastine reports, the storm brought out the best in Marchand.
JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: They call New Orleans "the big easy." But there was nothing easy about Percy Marchand's path to being a successful entrepreneur. Marchand's print shop had only been opened for one week in 2005 when burst New Orleans' levees. This print shop was flooded, his printing gear and computers worth $50,000 completely destroyed.
PERCY MARCHAND, OWNER, MARCHAND INK: It was heartbreaking because of the fact that I had spent so much time getting everything situated and settled. There was just gook all over the floor, like inches of gook, like three or four inches of stuff, real slippery. I had pretty much similar set up to this, all my equipment was turned on its side, counters turned upside down and things like that.
YASTINE: In a city in chaos for months after the flooding, the simplest action would have been to forget about the printing business. Marchand though, chose to start up the business for a second time.
MARCHAND: Electricity was scattered. There were a lot of power outages. You didn't have phone service. You didn't have Internet. It was hard to get supplies and deliveries in so you just had to kind of work around all those different things.
YASTINE: Two years later and Marchand Ink is busy and profitable. Percy has gone from being sole owner and employee to hiring two additional people. But he says even now, labor shortages in the city make it tough to find the right workers at the right price.
MARCHAND: Because the expectation of wages, post-Katrina went up excessively. You're talking about McDonald's or Burger King paying $10 or $12 an hour. And everybody starts thinking, especially a job like this, oh, I should be paid $15 to $20 an hour which if this was a larger company, that may be possible, but as a small business owner, it made it real challenging.
YASTINE: In some ways, Katrina was the worst and the best that ever happened to Percy Marchand. The storm destroyed Percy's first business location, but it also destroyed those of his competitors. And while Percy rebuilt his business, most of his competitors did not. This Kinko's copy shop, one of Marchand's main rivals in the New Orleans print trade, remains closed. That's a key factor of the economic recovery here since the storm, according to Peter Ricchiuti, assistant dean at Tulane University's business school.
PETER RICCHIUTI, ASST. DEAN, TULANE UNIV./FREEMAN BUSINESS SCHOOL: If you had asked me before the storm what would happen in this scenario, I would have thought that the big companies, the franchises, the established companies, would come back first and it would be the small mom and pops that would struggle and it hasn't been that clear. A lot of times the big companies have been dragging their feet coming back or have decided not to come back and the small local New Orleanean has really pulled it all together and come back.
YASTINE: But as New Orleans rebuilds and the memories of Katrina grow distant, Marchand knows his competitors will re-appear. He's preparing for that day by re-investing in his business and adding a second shop. He's learned well the lessons of being an entrepreneur.
MARCHAND: Always seek out new opportunities. Never settle and capitalize on those opportunities. A challenge is just an opportunity for you to overcome and to excel and then any opportunity that presents itself, make sure that you take advantage of the ones that you can do and do well.
YASTINE: Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New Orleans.
