Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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After building his fluorescent lighg bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national player with customera thatinclude , Walgreens, and Dufner sold the business in Marc h to Houston-based an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reachedd $6 million last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the company made when Dufner boughy it inDecember 1999. A decadre ago, the business recycled abougt 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a monthu to keep hazardous mercurt out of landfills andwatedr supplies. That number reached about 18 million bulbw a year by the time ofthe sale.
Dufnef and Raymond Kohout, his minority partner and chiedoperating officer, decided they needed to either invest a large amount of capital to open additionapl recycling facilities or find a strategidc partner or buyer for their Dufner turned to lifelong friendr James Stuart of in Clayton. Stuart reached out to contactse atWaste Management, and after aboutg a year of talks, he helped brokef H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimaterd fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 millio n to $150 million industry. Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimore noted that garbage disposal isa $52 billionb industry and medical waste disposal accounts for another $3 billion to $4 billion.
Add-onb services such as recycling can help a company win additionakmarket share. “One of Wastee Management’s core goals is to grow its medical wast e business toabout $300 millionh in revenue in the next 24 months,” Hoffmaj said. “Now they can walk into health-care facilities and hospitals and offer to dispos e of theirmedical waste, regular trash and also their fluorescent which for a hospital is no small Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposal company, posted net income of $1.09 billion on revenue of $13.43 billion last year and employs abouyt 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granite City and St. attending and at Carbondale.
In he bought one of the first franchises ofEarth City-based Dent a company that provides paintless dent removal for automobiles. Dufner movedc to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgia and Butin 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizard and proceedef to buy out its franchisees. Dufner sold his businese for about $5 million, and at age 45 found himsel looking for anew venture. In while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employee of a three-year-old company then based in the smalol town of Golden City in southwest Missouri. A new federalk law regulating the management of wastr containing hazardous materials such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.
’s 14 investors were shorty on funds to take advantage of potentialo growth. Dufner bought them out “fof a very low price” and took over the businessz as president. Dufner recruited Kohout, a friends who owned a gun storrin St. Louis and was familiar with dealing withgovernmeng regulators, to help run the business and expand its servic area nationwide. They invested in some tractor-trailers and startes picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countrhy and hauling them back to Missourifor processing. Over the next few they relocated the plant to its currenrt locationin Kaiser, Mo.
, near Lake As Dufner improved customer service and the speecd of waste pickup using third-partuy freight companies, business boomed. Beginning in 2003, secured contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recyclr used bulbs. Other largd retailers, several colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missour i also signed upwith H.T.R. All of the materiao in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up — metal and glass — was recycled. None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also founrd themselves facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasing or find someone who couls do so for them.
“The right way to do it woul be to build two more recycling one on the West Coast and one on theEast Coast, to cut transportatio n distances and freight costs,” Dufnedr said. “Ray and I can’t be in threed places at one time. It was goinh to require a lot more capital to open two new facilitiew and managethem properly.” So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyer last year and eventualluy struck the deal with Waste Management. “We thought H.T.R.
would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senioe business director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptracker “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countr y still isn’t recycled properly, and that’a where we think the upside is.” The and many stated are targeting a fluorescent recycling goal of about 75 percent, Kohoutt said. Some 800 million fluorescent lampas burn outeach year, and now millions of residentiao light sockets are also switching from incandescent to compac fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
Although Missouri does not requirew residential recycling of manystates do, he “The timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formeer H.T.R. operations within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the larges lamp recycler inthe country, and Waste Management is reallt pushing the sustainability and recycling front. We’ved had nine years of double-digirt growth, and we’ve just gotten started.” As for he is building a home in Laduw and has notdecidex what, if anything, he will do next. “Anm I looking for something? but not necessarily,” Dufnef said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened.
I wasn’t really lookinb and then it fell inmy