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01/13/2016 07:30 AMWhether it’s donating huge rolls of pink bubble wrap—enough to cover the floor for the highlight of the Adams Middle School annual 8th grade dinner dance—or covering the cost of care packages (ask him about shipping Silly String to soldiers on the front lines), Jeff Von Flatern feels privileged to have a local business that can give back to its community.
As the owner of two UPS Stores, including one in Clinton and the other at Guilford’s Village Walk, Jeff says he and his wife, Tina, left their corporate jobs in the early 2000s with the goal of moving back to the Connecticut shoreline where they grew up and getting involved as small business owners.
“One of the reasons I wanted to start this business was just that reason,” says Jeff. “When I was kid, there was always somebody’s business name on my Little League shirt or on the billboards out on the fence on the field. Somebody was doing it.”
All of those little things add up and it takes community support to make them happen.
“When you’re a kid, you don’t realize it, but as you get older and you go through the process, you understand how much it costs to do these things and how much you rely on people. So that was as much a driving force in buying a small business and giving back to the community as was getting out of corporate,” says Jeff.
The couple ultimately came back to Jeff’s childhood home in Waterford to help his dad, diagnosed with cancer, enjoy quality of life during his final years; they have remained Waterford residents. They bought their first UPS store in Clinton in 2005, followed by the UPS store in Guilford in 2008.
Having a 35-mile commute to Guilford hasn’t dampened Jeff’s enthusiasm for getting involved with this town. He inherited some nice community connections when taking on the business and has grown many more since that time.
The Guilford shop’s mailroom is the address for about 20 different local organizations receiving donated post office boxes at the Village Walk address.
“I inherited them from the last owner and we’re happy to continue to donate these boxes. They need addresses; they need somewhere to receive packages. It’s a fun part of the job to be able to offer them a little help,” says Jeff.
The store services also include shipping, packing, printing, and freight (such as furniture). Jeff’s experience as a national sales manager overseeing $12 million a year in sales for a New Jersey metal stamping business helped instill in him an ability to network.
“I have been fortunate; coming out of sales I was a comfortable networker,” says Jeff. “So there’s not a funeral director, art gallery, junk dealer, or auction house that has not met me. Because of that, last year we set a record and shipped about $3.2 million worth of art—that’s not sales, but the value of the art—so that’s a very nice niche market we’ve kind of grown into.”
The success has also helped both the Von Flaterns’ small businesses give back in their communities.
“It’s because of all the other business we do, that we get to do that,” says Jeff. “It’s not done to get business; it’s in the other direction.”
From shipping eyeglasses collected by the Clinton Lions Club to sending soldiers or Wounded Warriors care packages to printing up posters for missing pets or offering to help someone who hasn’t even come in to ask for it (and annually donating enough bubble wrap for a dance that has become a legendary rite of passage for Guilford’s graduating 8th graders), Jeff’s reputation as a business owner who cares has spread in both towns.
One of the reasons Jeff says he’s been able to help so many folks through the years is that his staff is also sensitive to the needs of community members who come into the store.
“We’ve been given all kinds of opportunities to help out. They come and go and it’s kind of cool that our folks that we work with are tuned into what we want to do,” says Jeff.
Even during the recent busy Christmas shipping season, a store employee, Erik Brown, found someone he thought Jeff would want to assist.
“He kind of gave me a look, so I made my way over and there was a young gentleman with a lot of kids clothes in all sizes. So we were boxing it up and we asked him about the clothes and he said he was sending them to the [Syrian) refugees. So we were able to help him. Why would you not?”
His stores also assisted in shipping items of support and assistance during the Newtown school shooting tragedy and plenty of care packages to soldiers deployed during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a lot of parents coming in with 18- and 19-year old kids in Fallujah or elsewhere—it was heartbreaking—and they were sending them care packages,” says Jeff. “I must have shipped about 500 cans of Silly String. What I found out later was that for room-clearing operations, they’d stand in the doors of rooms and shoot this Silly String for all the trip wires. It would land across the wires, but wouldn’t set it off. One of the soldiers explained it to me when he came in here with his mom after he got back.”
Jeff stresses he’s not the only local business owner who wants to help out in their community—he’s met plenty—in Guilford, in Clinton and towns in-between.
“Most business owners that I know—and I was in one of the largest BNI networks, Guilford and Madison, which had about 40 businesses—just about every one would be supporting [community causes] every time we met. Everybody does it and I don’t think anybody does it because they want their name in the paper. It’s great having a business that gives you the opportunity to do those kinds of things. The community connection is huge.”