GETTING TO KNOW THE MAN BEHIND THE PACKAGING: 5 Questions with the Founder and CEO of Tango Packaging
Q: What made you want to get into the “old-school” world of packaging?
A: After walking at my college graduation ceremony for a business administration degree, I still needed to take my senior level finance class in order to receive my diploma. I stuck around my school, The Master’s University in the Los Angeles area, to complete this last class. Going from taking a year's worth of credits in just one semester, to taking one class to finish, I had some extra time on my hands.
My resume found its way to a packaging company in the LA area and they called me in for an interview to fill a new packaging consultant position. I walked into that interview knowing nothing about the packaging world, but after taking the job I quickly saw the huge opportunity to help people and businesses navigate the ins and outs of the industry. I loved every moment of it! To this day, I still do not know exactly how that company got my resume… it certainly was God's providence that put me into the packaging realm.
Q: What aspect of Tango are you most proud of?
A: I am most proud of Tango’s world class team that serves our customers as strategic partners. Every person involved in our organization has the creativity, business acumen, and situational knowledge to create a strategic level of value for our customers that set us apart. Relationships are not just important to us, they are everything to us. This along with the strategic advice we share with our customers is the kind of value that provides them with a competitive advantage.
We have of course had our fair share of growing pains and mistakes. But we own up to them, plan better actions, and execute the changes to thrive. The results speak for themselves - trusted relationships with the people and companies we serve with a 100% retention rate since day one almost a decade ago. I'm proud of the rockstar people who love our customers.
Q: When you aren’t busy with packaging, what are you doing?
A: I find my purpose in helping others discover their purpose. When I'm not doing this with Tango, I'm doing it by coaching wrestling. This will be my sixth season as the head coach of Sylmar Charter High School. When I started as the head coach, Sylmar had historically been one of the bottom teams in the LA area with the exception of a couple good years. Last season, our hard working student-wrestlers made school history by winning the league championship for the first time ever. As exciting as that was, our success did not end there. We went on to win the Los Angeles Section Dual Team Championships, which hadn’t been done by our school since they started the first wrestling team in the 60's. It has been such a tremendous reward to see these young men and women succeed both on and off the wrestling mat.
Q: The most important question yet… What team are you rooting for when Sunday comes around?
A: The one and only, America's team, the DALLAS COWBOYS! And before you utter the words "bandwagon fan" I’ll let you know that I have been a fan since I was a little kid. The Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith era was a fun time to watch and build my fandom, but I have stayed strong even through the many disappointing years since. People ask, "How can you be a cowboys fan when you aren't from Texas?" While I am from Oregon, we don’t have a team in our state, so I chose the Cowboys as a little kid and have only deepened my love for them over time. Besides, who should I have chosen? The Seahawks? Please! I don’t care if it's curling, everything from Washington state is an Oregonian's rival. But I do love the merlot from there... and REI... and pickleball... and Nordstrom... okay, maybe I'm not totally against everything from Washington.
Q: Lastly, where do you see Tango in the next 5 years, and how do you plan to get there?
A: We have grown organically at a steady rate through word-of-mouth referrals. In the past few years, we have seen a lot of growth, but it's still very important to us to continue to provide the personal touch and trusted advice our customers enjoy to help guide them to a better future. Here are three things you can expect from Tango over the next 5 years:
An expanded top-tier packaging consultant team.
More production capabilities to keep up with the increasing demand.
Technological advances and products that will shake up the industry. It's a core value of ours to stay innovative and develop new and better products, processes, and insights for our customers. We’re excited to start releasing some of these ideas, so stay tuned!