Solpak Celebrates 20 Years of Packaging Innovation

Twenty years is not a milestone. It is a proof of concept.

In the early days of Solpak, I was not thinking about years. I was thinking about months. Sometimes weeks.

Getting through the first year. Landing the next client. Making payroll without borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today.

Twenty years later, I look at what we have built, and the word that comes to mind is not pride. It is gratitude.

How it started

I did not set out to build a packaging company. I set out to build a company that would give me freedom.

The packaging industry found me, not the other way around. An M&A deal at a telecom company I worked for pushed me out the door. Instead of finding another employer, I looked for an opportunity.

Solpak was that opportunity.

I knew nothing about packaging. I knew how to sell, how to manage, and how to build a team. The rest I would learn.

What twenty years actually taught me

The business problems change. The people problems do not.

At five years, the challenge was finding clients. At ten years, it was managing a growing team without losing what made us good. At twenty years, it is staying relevant in a market that moves faster than it used to.

But underneath all of that, the same question keeps coming back: are you building something that works without you, or are you building a job that follows you everywhere?

That question is what eventually led me to write Built for Freedom. The answer took twenty years to find.

The number that matters most

600 clients. 15 team members. Consistent growth, year over year.

Those are real numbers. I am proud of them.

But the number that matters most to me is not on any dashboard. It is the number of people who trusted Solpak with something that mattered to their business, and who came back.

Twenty years of coming back. That is the proof of concept.