Bright idea: Marvin Dufner makes millions recycling bulbs - Kansas City Business Journal:

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecycling company, H.T.R. into a national player with customersw thatinclude , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufnef sold the business in March to Houston-basesd an estimated $12 million. H.T.R.’d revenue reached $6 million last 17 times more thanthe $350,0000 the company made when Dufner boughft it in December 1999. A decade ago, the business recycled abou 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a month to keep hazardous mercurt out of landfills andwatet supplies.
That number reached about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partner and chief operating officer, decided they neededd to either invest a large amount of capitakl to open additional recyclin facilities or find a strategic partnerr or buyer for their Dufner turned to lifelong friend Jamew Stuart of in Clayton. Stuart reached out to contactd atWaste Management, and afted about a year of talks, he helped broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimated fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 millionm to $150 million industry.
Analyst Michaepl Hoffman of in Baltimore notee that garbage disposal isa $52 billion industry and medica l waste disposal accounts for another $3 billioj to $4 billion. Add-on services such as recyclingv can help a company win additionalmarket “One of Waste Management’s core goalxs is to grow its medical wastew business to about $300 million in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said. “Now they can walk into health-care facilities and hospitalas and offer to dispose of their medical regular trash and also theirfluorescentr bulbs, which for a hospital is no smalk thing.” Waste Management, North America’s largest waste disposal company, posted net incomr of $1.
09 billion on revenue of $13.4 billiob last year and employs about 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granitee City and St. Louis, attending and at Carbondale. In he bought one of the first franchises ofEarth City-basec Dent Wizard, a company that provide s paintless dent removal for automobiles. Dufnet moved to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgiazand Alabama. But in 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizar and proceeded to buy outits franchisees.
Dufner sold his business for about $5 million, and at age 45 founr himself looking for a new In 1999, 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 A new federal law regulating the management of wastse containing hazardous materials such as mercurhy had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on fundw to take advantage of potentia growth. Dufner bought them out “fore a very low and took over the business as Dufnerrecruited Kohout, a friendd who owned a gun store in St.
Louia and was familiar with dealing withgovernment regulators, to help run the businesx and expand its service area They invested in some tractor-trailers and started pickin up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the country and haulint them back to Missouri for Over the next few years, they relocated the plant to its current location in Kaiser, Mo., near Lake As Dufner improved customer service and the speed of waste pickup using third-party freight companies, business Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secured contractzs with Wal-Mart to pick up and recyclse used bulbs.
Other largs retailers, several colleges and universities, and statezs such as Iowa and Missourk also signed up with All of the material in thebulbs H.T.R. pickefd up — mercury, metal and glass was recycled. None went to landfills. But with the Dufner and Kohout also foun themselves facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasingh volume, or find someone who couled do so for them. “The right way to do it would be to build two morerecycling plants, one on the West Coasrt and one on the East to cut transportation distances and freight costs,” Dufned said. “Ray and I can’t be in thred places at one time.
It was going to requird a lot more capitakl to open two new facilitied and manage them So Dufner, who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buyef last year and eventually struck the deal with Wasted Management. “We thought H.T.R. would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senior busines s director for Waste Management’s WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countrgystill isn’t recycled properly, and that’z where we think the upside The and many states are targetiny a fluorescent recycling goal of about 75 Kohout said.
Some 800 million fluorescenty lamps burn outeach year, and now millions of residential lightr sockets are also switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent ligh t bulbs (CFLs). Although Missouri does not require residential recyclinggof CFLs, many states do, he said. “The timingg was perfect,” said Kohout, who continues to run the formert H.T.R. operations within WM “We are now the largest lamp recyclet inthe country, and Waste Managemenf is really pushing the sustainability and recyclinyg front. We’ve had nine years of double-digit growth, and we’v just gotten started.
” As for he is building a home in Ladue and has notdecidefd what, if anything, he will do next. “Ak I looking for something? Possibly, but not Dufner said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened. I wasn’r really looking and then it fell inmy lap.”