Rayonier's Jet Set

For most U.S. companies, exports are only an added profit sweetener, but for Manhattan's Rayonier, Inc., exports are meat, marrow and potatoes. The world's biggest manufacturer of chemical cellulose pulps -- which go into products from Cellophane to cigarette filters, rayon, gun powder and ice cream -- Rayonier engages in one of the world's most hotly competitive businesses. Finding itself with too much U.S. capacity a decade ago, Rayonier decided to sally more boldly abroad.

Since then, it has raised export sales from $16 million to $55 million. "Exports represented 41% of our $135 million in sales last year," reports President Russell F. Erickson, 52. They provided the extra volume that gave Rayonier an after-tax profit of $7,990,000, and, says Erickson. "our future growth will come almost entirely in overseas markets."

Chasing the Smokestacks. It was former President Clyde Morgan, now the chairman, who ended Rayonier's rather casual treatment of exports. He fired most of Rayonier's foreign sales agents, who were largely order takers, and he combined foreign and domestic sales under one staff that considers the whole world its market. Rayonier's jet-minded salesmen treat a trip to Delhi almost as casually as a jaunt to Detroit. President Erickson himself has traveled 50.000 miles in pursuit of foreign sales. Travel has become such a way of life to jovial Sales Vice President Michael A. Brown. 45. that when he recently spotted his Paris manager at the Sao Paulo airport, he simply nodded to him and boarded another plane. Record Rayonier traveler last year was Hong Kong Chief Joseph Mache. who logged 142,000 air miles.

"You have to plug, plug, plug," sighs Sales Boss Brown, who says that "selling still means a certain amount of smokestack chasing," i.e., calling upon customers without an introduction and with only the merest hope for an order. A chance call on a German sausagemaker recently resulted in an order for 200 tons of pulp a year to make sausage skins. Sales seldom come quickly. It took five years to win an order from one Italian producer.

Irresistible Temptation. From hard experience, says Brown, "Rayonier has learned that you can't hitch your wagon to one market." Japan used to be a big market for Rayonier--until the Japanese built their own pulp mills. India now is a large buyer, but to hedge against the day when the Indians build up enough capacity of their own, Rayonier salesmen are now smokestack chasing for other Asian buyers in Indonesia and Malaya.

It is so easy to expand pulp mills that Rayonier sees no end to the stiff worldwide competition. "Once you build a pulp mill." says Vice President Brown, "the cost of doubling its size is relatively small, and the temptation to do so is almost irresistible." But with its bushwhacking sales force and a $2,000,000 research program to develop better pulps, Rayonier has no intention of falling behind.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.