My Customer's Customer, Myself

Integrated Packaging Corp, located in New Brunswick, N.J., uses his inner city location as a competitive advantage to win customers.

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The Inner City 100

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Some CEOs play down their inner-city location when they're talking to customers. Al Fuller trumpets his to the skies.

Fuller is cofounder of Integrated Packaging Corp. (#75), a New Brunswick, N.J., company that makes boxes and corrugated paper. Fuller's customers include consumer-products colossi like PepsiCo, a corporation whose soft drinks -- not coincidentally -- sell well in urban areas. "Pepsi wants its supplier base to look more like its customer base," says Fuller. "So being in the inner city becomes a competitive advantage."

Other companies regard inner cities as an untapped revenue opportunity. Hiring vendors like Integrated Packaging sends "a signal" to those communities, says Fuller. Perhaps even more important, inner-city companies hire inner-city residents, boosting the workers' income in the process. "Companies like Kraft and Procter & Gamble sell premium products," explains Fuller. "It's important to them to build consumers who can buy Bounty instead of the generic version. That's the longer-term business case."

The Inner City 100

City Lights
There are a million stories in the inner cities. These are some of them.
Winnebago Take All Team 2000 Staffing Services (#62)
Visible Signs of Relief Robinwood Inc. (#29)
In the Bank Sherman Assembly Systems (#95)
The English Impatient Crystal Window & Door Systems Ltd. (#86)
Fish Fry Clearwater Fisheries (#21)
Border Fulfillment Miratek Corp. (#22)
My Customer's Customer, Myself Integrated Packaging Corp. (#75)
Take My Franchise, Please Candy Bouquet International Inc. (#37)
After-School Special GreatAmerica Leasing Corp. (#27)
All About Eaves Aztec Roofing & Sheetmetal Corp. (#58)

Comeback Markets
Most companies have taken a pass on the huge inner-city service market. Some smart CEOs are eagerly filling the void.

Who Wants to be a Milliner?
The story of this year's #1 Inner City 100 company.

The Inner City 100 Almanac
Fast facts about the Inner City 100 CEOs and their businesses.

The List
The fastest-growing private inner-city companies.

Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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