After decades as a publishing executive, Eric Goeres decided he wanted an entirely new type of gig. He’d had a fulfilling career working at several of the biggest publishing houses in New York City, but the media business was changing dramatically as it shifted from print to digital products. For Goeres, too, it was time for a change. He’d already been an entrepreneur, having launched and then sold his own media agency in the early 2000s. But for his second foray into owning a company, Goeres had a new goal: a future-proof business.
Unlike so many businesses that are being challenged by new technologies and the inventive business models of startup competitors, “I wanted something analog,” Goeres says. In a word: ice. “You can’t ship ice, you can’t buy ice from overseas, social media can’t mess up ice and it’s very necessary in times of emergency,” says Goeres. “There’s no replacement—and there’s no way to disrupt it.”
With his entrepreneurial experience, Goeres knew he didn’t want to start his business at square one. So a year ago, he purchased an existing ice business, Alaska Ice Corp., in Miami, FL. “I liked the idea of getting into something very physical,” he continues.
Alaska Ice Corp. sells ice in chunks of more than 1,000 pounds—roughly the size of a refrigerator—to clients including fish importers. Goeres’ clients are shipping fish up from South America on ice, and by the time the products reach Miami—en route to New York City, Portland, OR, and other far-flung destinations—it requires fresh ice to keep it frozen. Likewise, Alaska Ice Corp. sells to flower importers shipping their products from South America to U.S. markets.
If switching from making magazines to creating and selling ice sounds like a dramatic shift—well, it is. “I spent years in New York city office buildings,” says Goeres. “And now I work in a 15,000–square-foot ice plant in Southern Florida.” He went from looking at a computer screen for the majority of his workdays to receiving a meager six emails a day. And he spends a good part of his mornings shoveling ice into 800 pounds bins. “When you’re shoveling ice for two hours a day, you know. This is definitely not behind a desk—this is real, actual work,” says Goeres. “And that’s different right there.”
On the other hand, Goeres says that his management skills from his days as a publishing executive were entirely transferable to his new role as the owner of the company. And he applied them to help the business he took over achieve a healthy bottom line. “I have the same management style now,” says Goeres. “I worked on the core business first, stabilizing the revenue streams—basically stopped the bleeding—and then we will find new ways to get money coming in.” Stabilizing the business included some necessary updates, such as getting the company’s accounting system, previously done on paper, onto computers, and ramping up production from 30,000 pounds of ice a day to the current 100,000.
No longer tied to the ways that a media business measures success, Goeres has a whole new view of a good day at work: “I like to think of myself now as measuring output in millions of pounds of ice, not page views or ad impressions,” he says.
While Goeres admits the life of the entrepreneur is anything but easy, he encourages others to take the leap. “Fear is probably the thing that keeps most would-be entrepreneurs from actually starting their projects,” says Goeres, who says that managing the cash flow when expenses come ahead of big sales can definitely keep him up at night. “That being said, one of the things I’ve learned on this journey is not only how to manage money better, but also how to manage emotions,” says Goeres. “You will work things out, you will find a way and there’s always a solution somewhere.”
Julie Anne Russell is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist. She writes on personal finance, small business, travel and more.