Business Spotlight: Containing a Concept

The idea for Samuel Popa’s $6 million business was born while he was watching a James Bond movie.

“In the movie, he pulled into a port or something and there’s a bunch of containers everywhere, and it looked cool,” says Popa, 24, who started BuiltBox Containers LLC at 20 years old. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I show up to work every day and there’s containers everywhere, and it’s like a port?’ It was just a cool vibe.”

Much like the concept Popa saw in the movie, the BuiltBox lot on West Sunshine Street is hard for passersby to miss. Containers of various colors are stacked all around the property, and there is an eye-popping branded BuiltBox sign made from a storage container that appears to be standing on end.

In the beginning, Popa started researching online on how to make containers into a business, he says. He didn’t even know at that point whether he was going to sell, manufacture or what the logistics were going to be.  After being laid off from his job as a patient transporter at Mercy Hospital Springfield during the COVID-19 pandemic, all he had to invest was the $600 he continued to receive for furlough pay.

Popa had always wanted to be a business owner, and he says he attempted several businesses from the time he was 15 years old, including starting his own clothing brand.

Popa added that his parents hoped he would attend college, which he did for a year, as they are from Romania, and living in the United States provided opportunities for him.

“Romania is a communist country,” he says. “At this point, my mom just saw my businesses start, then fail.”

Popa says he started by being the middleman, obtaining containers for companies that needed them out of his office in Farmers Park and then reselling for a profit. Once he made his first $10,000, he says he felt like a millionaire, and knew he could make the business work long term.

Today, Popa’s business has 20 employees and although the company came in at $6 million last year, he says it’s on target for $12 million this year.

Operations
Popa says the boxes themselves are manufactured in China, like most are, then the ones he orders are shipped with freight to the United States. The containers are unloaded and then shipped to Kansas City, where Popa has a hub for receiving containers. From there, his employed truck drivers, one of which is his dad, bring them on his eight semi-trucks to Springfield.

Once the company began to grow, Popa purchased the 6.71-acre property on West Sunshine to customize the inside of the boxes for the container offices. He says the current space is way too small for customization manufacturing, and he plans to build a 40,000- to 50,000-square-foot building for more manufacturing space on another piece of land in Springfield.

One of BuiltBox’s regular customers is civil construction company JD Wallace Contracting LLC. Owner Justin Wallace says he has ordered eight containers from Popa, seven of which are for storage and one that is a solar-powered mobile office.

Prior to working with BuiltBox, Wallace says he was buying containers online.

“I was having to drive to Kansas City or St. Louis to go pick them up,” Wallace says. “Between travel and the cost of the container, I would say I probably save around $500 a container.”

Popa says his customer base is mostly commercial clients wanting to use containers for storage. Sales, retail and office manufacturing from the BuiltBox lot on West Sunshine is about 50% of revenue, while the other half comes from off-site operations.

Popa says the company is selling around 15,000 containers a year, ranging from $2,400 to $25,000 apiece, which includes regular containers and custom office spaces. The price varies based on size and features.

Sorin Tocai, who was promoted to vice president of the company in July, says the most challenging aspect of the company’s growth has been learning to work with people, employees included.

“You grow into dealing with people,” he says. “They come to you with something that you have to handle, and some people are delicate.”

Growing into the future
Popa says the current focus is making BuiltBox Containers LLC the umbrella for small divisions of the company. He says the four focus points will comprise wholesale, manufacturing, rental and sales of containers and container offices.

Popa says he would take on pretty much any job he could get when BuiltBox started out, which made custom jobs quite diverse. One box was used for a convention in Las Vegas that had a balcony on the top and sides that would fold down and open. However, Popa says they are moving away from jobs like that in the future and reducing options to maximize profits.

Popa says he would like to focus on the branding becoming something people notice, much like the company’s container signage on West Sunshine.

He says he plans to expand across the Midwest, where most of his business now already comes from.

“We’re just growing and growing,” Popa says. “Realistically, I would say in two years, we will be over 100 employees. It’s crazy to think about, but I don’t have an exit plan anytime soon.”

Popa says one of his keys to success is taking risks.

“I don’t have a plan B, there’s only plan A,” he says. “If you have a plan B, you always know you have something to fall back on. The biggest risk you can take is not taking a risk, but of course a calculated risk.”