Marc Mills and Dave Mirsky were each 22 years old when they left their jobs to create Pacific Rim Capital Inc., a financing services firm that leases material-handling equipment.
The duo met in 1984 in Lakewood, Colo.-at a leasing company with a focus on computers and information technology equipment. Mills was vice president of sales, and Mirsky was executive vice president of marketing when they came to see things needed fixing at the company.
“We thought the company had a couple of major issues, and we thought we needed to break the mold and do things differently,” said Mirsky, now chief operating officer of Pacific Rim. “The board didn’t listen, and it caused us to leave.”
They set up Pacific Rim in a 1,000-square-foot shop in the Irvine Spectrum Center in 1990.
Early Days
“There were four of us,” Mirsky said. “The only person who got a salary was our secretary. We were using card tables.”
The company now has more than $140 million in revenue, and has been on the Business Journal’s list of fastest-growing private companies for a number of years.
Pacific Rim has made more than $1 billion worth of lease originations since its launch. It was recently recognized as a National Corporate Plus member of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, a “unique designation” recognizing the company’s ability to win big contracts nationally, according to Mills, who is African-American and president of the company.
Pacific Rim ranked No. 8 on this week’s Business Journal list of minority-owned companies here.
Orange County was an attractive place for the company to start off.
“We were in Denver when we were at our old company,” Mirsky said. “But when we decided to start Pacific Rim, we made a definite choice to be in OC. We thought we’d have a better chance of hiring better people. Our employees moved here from all over.”
The company outgrew an Irvine office and moved to the 10,000-square-foot headquarters in Aliso Viejo in 2002, where all administrative work is done with 35 employees.
“We do more business with fewer people than anyone else in the industry,” Mirsky said. “And we hire only people who aren’t from our industry.”
Market Share
Pacific Rim was ranked as one of the largest lessors of material-handling equipment by the Monitor trade publication, with 7% market share in 2010.
“The largest lessor of material handling in North America that leases forklifts-related equipment [are] Toyota, Wells Fargo and us,” Mirsky said. “We’re the largest independent one. We’re not associated with a manufacturer, and we work directly with customers.”
Pacific Rim has customers spread across various industries, including aerospace, automotive, consumer goods and packaged foods. Its client roster includes household names such as PepsiCo Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and Nestle Inc.
“The customer decides what they’re looking for, and we take care of the ‘how,’ ” Mills said.
Great Year
Mirsky said the company is able to make volumes of corporate sales from the OC site without geographical limitations.
“We had a great year last year,” Mirsky said. “The government was giving a bonus appreciation incentive. You could write off the whole thing if you bought equipment. That shoved a lot of orders into last year.”
Pacific Rim got an even bigger lift from the recession.
“The biggest gain for the company came in the financial crisis in 2008,” Mirsky said. “Back then, there was either cheap money or no money. So companies with great credit had good opportunities. The market seized up, and we grabbed tons of market share. At the end of that, we came out at the top. That was the biggest gain that propelled us.”
Mills and Mirsky said business this quarter has been “OK,” and they expect to see similar revenue for this year as they did in 2011.
Pacific Rim recently opened an office in Dublin, Ireland, an addition to its growing international presence.
“We opened in Canada in 2007,” Mirsky said. “We’ve already got tons of customers there. We opened an office in Mexico two years ago. Opening up in Europe was expensive, but now we’re set up and developing business.”
Leasing, according to Mills and Mirsky, is a tricky business that could have a lot of costs tacked on at the end for the customers. They describe their business as a discipline that’s susceptible to fraudulent activity.
“It comes down to personal belief,” Mills said.
“We share the exact same ethical backbone,” Mirsky added.
Good Pair
The two make a good pair.
“In 2014, we will have been working together [30] years,” Mills said.
Mirsky calls himself the “inside person,” who handles the nuts and bolts of the business, while Mills runs the overall business development side.
“What we do here is so different,” Mirsky said. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well.”
