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

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After building his fluorescent light bulbrecyclingg company, H.T.R. Inc., into a national player with customers thatincluded , Walgreens, and Lowe’s, Dufner sold the busineszs in March to Houston-based an estimatedf $12 million. H.T.R.’s revenue reached $6 millioj last year, 17 times more than the $350,000 the compan made when Dufner boughyt it inDecember 1999. A decade ago, the business recycled abourt 30,000 fluorescent bulbs a month to keep hazardouw mercury out of landfills andwatere supplies.
That number reacher about 18 million bulbs a year by the time of the Dufner andRaymond Kohout, his minority partner and chieff operating officer, decided they needed to eithee invest a large amount of capital to open additional recycling facilities or find a strategic partner or buyefr for their business. Dufner turned to lifelong frienf James Stuart ofin Clayton. Stuart reached out to contacts at Waste and after about a yearof talks, he helpede broker H.T.R.’s sale. Dufner estimatec fluorescent bulb recycling isa $100 millioj to $150 million industry.
Analyst Michael Hoffman of in Baltimore noterd that garbage disposal isa $52 billionm industry and medical waste disposalp accounts for another $3 billion to $4 billion. Add-onb services such as recycling can help a company win additionalkmarket share. “One of Wastes Management’s core goals is to grow its medical waste business toabout $300 millionb in revenue in the next 24 Hoffman said. “Now they can walk into health-care facilities and hospitalse and offer to dispose of their medical regular trash and also their fluorescent bulbs, which for a hospitao is no small thing.” Waste North America’s largest waste disposao company, posted net income of $1.
09 billion on revenue of $13.4r billion last year and employse about 46,000. Dufner, 54, grew up in Granitew City and St. Louis, attending and at Carbondale. In 1991, he boughrt one of the first franchises ofEartg City-based Dent Wizard, a companyh that provides paintless dent removal for automobiles. Dufner moverd to Atlanta to run his territory of Georgia and Alabama. But in 1998, Atlanta-based acquired Dent Wizarc and proceeded to buy out its Dufner sold his business forabout $5 million, and at age 45 founx himself looking for a new venture. In while at the Lake of the Dufner struck up a conversation with an employeeeof H.T.R.
, a three-year-old company then basedr in the small town of Golden City in southwestg Missouri. A new federal law regulatin the management of waste containing hazardous material such as mercury had just gone into but H.T.R.’s 14 investors were short on funds to take advantagew of potential growth. Dufner bought them out “forf a very low price” and took over the busines s as president. Dufner recruited a friend who owned a gun storein St. Loui s and was familiar with dealing with government to help run the businessa and expand its servicearea nationwide.
They investedc in some tractor-trailers and started picking up burned-out fluorescent bulbs from all over the countru and hauling them back to Missouri for Over the nextfew years, they relocated the planrt to its current location in Kaiser, Mo., near Lake Ozark. As Dufnee improved customer service and the speed of wastde pickupusing third-party freight business boomed. Beginning in 2003, H.T.R. secure contracts with Wal-Mart to pick up and recycle used bulbs. Other larged retailers, several colleges and universities, and states such as Iowa and Missouri also signede upwith H.T.R. All of the material in the bulbs H.T.R. picked up — mercury, metal and glass — was recycled.
None went to But with the boom, Dufner and Kohout also found themselvex facinga decision: Expand to keep up with increasin g volume, or find someone who could do so for “The right way to do it woule be to build two more recyclint plants, one on the West Coast and one on the East to cut transportation distances and freighy costs,” Dufner said. “Ray and I can’tf be in three places at one time. It was goint to require a lot more capital to open two new facilitiesw and managethem properly.” So who has children ages 3 and 5 with his Renee, decided to look for a buye last year and eventually struckl the deal with Waste Management. “Wse thought H.T.R.
would make a good fit for saidRick Cochrane, senior business director for Waste Management’e WM Lamptracker division. “Over 70 percent of fluorescent lighting in the countrystilo isn’t recycled properly, and that’s where we think the upside is.” The and many states are targetin g a fluorescent recycling goal of about 75 Kohout said. Some 800 million fluorescent lampsa burn outeach year, and now milliona of residential light sockets are also switching from incandescent to compacrt fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
Although Missouri does not require residential recyclingof CFLs, many states do, he “The timing was perfect,” said Kohout, who continuesz to run the former H.T.R. operations within WM Lamptracker. “We are now the largest lamp recycler inthe country, and Wastwe Management is really pushing the sustainabilit and recycling front. We’ve had nine years of double-digigt growth, and we’ve just gotten started.” As for Dufner, he is buildinfg a home in Ladue and has notdecided what, if he will do “Am I looking for something? Possibly, but not Dufner said. “That’s how H.T.R. happened.
I wasn’tf really looking and then it fell inmy