Miracle Order Saved R&R

Mert Rambadt, R&R Packaging Inc.’s vice president and cofounder, said the Gravette company was dying in July 1997 and he nearly shut the doors.

The packaging distribution firm had made a number of commitments that weren’t panning out financially, as a result of unforeseen cost increases. On one Friday afternoon, Rambadt said his crew finished yet another 16-hour day and loaded what he thought might be their last truckload of flexible packaging material for shipment.

Rambadt went home, and while sitting in his living room began to pray for direction.

“We had absorbed tremendous amounts of costs for some time that were not expected,” Rambadt said. “But we wouldn’t let profits stand in the way of our word. We were going to stick by the pricing we had promised our customers, even though we were really wondering if we were headed in the right direction.”

That night a representative from Simmons Foods’ Southwest City, Mo., plant called Rambadt with an emergency order. The poultry firm’s flexible bag supplier couldn’t get it any more bags for two weeks, and Simmons would run out by Tuesday night. That would have meant shutting down poultry production lines for more than a week.

Rambadt said he would do what he could, and called an old friend at an Albertville, Ala., print and conversion-packaging company. Rambadt had Simmons’ Blue Ribbon plates shipped to him on Saturday, then trucked straight through to Albertville on Sunday. By 8 a.m. Monday morning, Simmons’ bags were being printed, and by 3 a.m. Tuesday night, Rambadt had hand-delivered a week’s supply to the Southwest City plant.

Simmons was initially concerned about what the high-level personal service would cost, but Rambadt said he’d only charge 25 cents less than Simmons’ current supplier’s rate in exchange for an opportunity at future business. R&R has been a constant supplier of Blue Ribbon packaging ever since.

“We decided to never give up that level of customer service,” Rambadt said.