Today we’d like to introduce you to Giovana Rodrigues.
Giovana, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born and raised in Brazil. My connection with the US started soon after I graduated in Business Administration.
I was already working in a well-known international bank and was recently promoted, but what appeared to be the goal of many young professionals, I knew that I would learn a lot more by living abroad, and that was the right timing to make the move. At first, I never imagined staying in the US longer than the one year, but the experience was so positive that I’m now completing 18 years here.
I come from a family of five kids and our parents have always been very present and always enforcing some of the important pillars in life: to respect, to be honest, to work hard, and to not give up. My father was the one who encouraged me to be an entrepreneur and he was also my best teacher.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Being an entrepreneur is never a smooth road. Today, I see the challenges as an opportunity to learn and evolve in business. Many times I was discouraged, but I never gave up. At the time that I started working with wood panels, the economic scenario was favorable to the industry. We imported products with good quality from Brazil while most of the competitors held domestic materials.
Soon the Chinese realized that there was also an opportunity to enter the market with low-quality products and prices, not compatible with local production costs. Slowly, the Chinese products gained share and forced large manufacturers to close their doors, and in parallel, this shift of low-quality products was also affecting our importing goods and strategy.
That’s when we decided to manufacture the products our own, to move away from keeping a large stock. Since we could not compete with prices of Chinese materials, we began to make custom-made panels, with a much higher quality for a niche market that demanded that and not just price. Due to this obstacle, the company began a long and pleasant journey.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Plywood Express offers customized high-end wood panel product manufacturing using state-of-the-art machinery and the highest quality control standards available in all stages of the production line.
Over the years we built an amazing team that put lots of passion and love to their work, and that is reflected in each product that is made and service that is delivered. That is basically the foundation that made us grow and get where we are. Gradually we have been adding different line items to the portfolio, which are man-made and not 100% natural. So we are now able to fulfill different customers’ needs.
We go above and beyond to serve our customers, with the highest product quality and customer service. We follow advice from great entrepreneurs and embed them into our culture such as Sam Walton, founder of Walmart: “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else“.
If you had to start over, what would you have done differently?
It is very difficult to say if I would do something different if I started this again. I certainly think on some mistakes on strategies that looked reasonably good at the time, but proved not to be effective when executed.
Some of the mistakes helped us to mature and learn to rapidly adjust to the business. During this journey, we met people with so many different backgrounds and expertise so I can say that was also a great exchange of knowledge.
With the dishonest people I have learned to admire and honor honesty, with the ones with bad intentions I learned the beauty of good intentions, and with the lazy ones I have learned to value the work and the joy of having a task completed.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2601 Gateway Drive Pompano Beach, FL 33069
- Website: www.plywoodexpress.com
- Phone: (954) 956-7576
- Email: info@plywoodexpress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plywoodexpress_official/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plywoodexpress
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/plywoodexpress
- Other: http://plywoodexpress.com/blog/
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