Business Spotlight: AJM Packaging

To succeed in business requires a feat of leadership, industry savvy, money management, product knowledge and, above all else, hard work. To remain in business—and even thrive—across multiple generations and sweeping international changes is a singularly exceptional achievement. The Epstein family has done just that.

Since the early 20th century, the Epsteins have championed American entrepreneurship, working together as a family and as business leaders to carve their place within the national and international marketplace. Today, their family-owned AJM Packaging is a trusted leader in paper product production, a cornerstone of domestic manufacturing that supports thousands of employees and provides essential products and services to American consumers.

Detroit Roots Run Deep

The story of AJM Packaging began in Detroit in 1918. Brothers Abram, Jack, and Morris Epstein lived with their family in a small apartment above the family’s neighborhood grocery store. Maintaining the store was a team effort for the entire household—even the young boys, who stocked the shelves, unloaded the trucks, and took out the garbage. But despite many good years, the business was shuttered just before the economic crash of 1929.

Committed to working together, the family chose to remain in the food industry, buying and distributing produce, and later beer. After the three brothers’ beer distributorship was taken away during the Second World War, they began distributing paper products in 1946.

A decade later, Abram, Jack and Morris purchased their own paper bag machines and founded AJM Packaging Corporation in 1957, establishing their original headquarters in a red brick building on Dix Avenue. Utilizing their family’s distribution experience, entrepreneurial knowledge, and a commitment to product standards, AJM Packaging quickly established itself within the manufacturing industry. The company grew steadily over the next four decades.

In 1993, Abram’s son, Robert, took over as president of AJM and continued to expand the company’s market share and geographic footprint, acquiring several companies including Tidy Home and SOLO’s white paper-plate division in California. AJM has since become a leader in the manufacturing of tabletop, lunch bag, and grocery sack and bag products and the No. 1 manufacturer of private-label plates.

AJM goods are now found throughout the supply chain, from retailers and redistributors to wholesalers, distributors and jobbers, in channels that include grocery, drug, mass, discount, club, janitorial and sanitation, hardware, food service, QSR and more. AJM’s customer list reads like a who’s-who of American retailers, wholesalers and distributors.

Since 2000, AJM’s sales have grown by more than 200%, and the company now employs more than 3,000 people across eight strategically located facilities, all in the USA. In its 63-year history, AJM has never laid off employees due to economic conditions. Today, AJM is a third-generation family-owned, family-run business.

And after all of its growth, AJM still maintains a manufacturing facility in the red brick building on Detroit’s Dix Avenue.

Investing in The Future: Technological Evolution, Environmental Dedication

As a family company built from the ground up, AJM remains innately dedicated to the wellness of its community, its employees and its country; as a global leader in the manufacturing industry, AJM is able to wield this sense of personal responsibility through large-scale company practices, making a significant impact for the greater good.

Operating through the latter half of the 20th century and now the first two decades of the 21st, AJM has kept up with state-of-the-art equipment during the most rapidly changing technological landscape in the history of man. This ability to adapt to worldwide trends and harness new technology—whether for manufacturing, material handling or distribution—is a significant factor in the company’s ever-expanding and upgrading capabilities, continuously allowing AJM facilities to increase both capacity and efficiency without sacrificing its products’ unmatched quality.

The family-run company also applies its tech savvy to its commitment to environmentally responsible practices, with an eye toward preserving the planet for future generations. Energy-efficient, state-of-the-art equipment and LED lighting at AJM facilities combine with a number of company-wide practices aimed at reducing environmental impact while sustaining the company as an industry leader. Certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the Forest Stewardship Council, AJM sources all of its paper from sustainably managed forests, where felled trees are replaced with seedlings that are allowed to grow into mature trees.

In fact, everything that AJM makes is made from renewable resources. And everything that AJM makes is made in the USA, so that these best practices keep manufacturing jobs in the country and benefit as many Americans as possible.

Going Forward: Stability, Leadership, Community

From a neighborhood grocery store to a national manufacturing powerhouse, the family behind AJM Packing has maintained its hardworking Detroit disposition and always put people first. It’s a dichotomy rarely seen in business and rarer still to maintain over more than half a century: personal responsibility balanced with large-scale, professional success. But it’s through that very ethos that AJM continues to thrive, and to serve its consumers, employees, community and country all at once.

Over the years, AJM has received numerous accolades for its commitment to its employees and to the Detroit community. In 2018, SER Detroit named AJM “Employer of the Year,” in recognition of the company’s long-term contributions to the local community.

In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, AJM announced it was giving all of its Michigan front-line employees bonuses of up to $1,000 each, in recognition of their valuable contribution to the country’s management of the crisis. The pandemic also prompted AJM leadership to hire 250 new employees in a matter of weeks, in an attempt to meet the remarkable need for AJM products during this uncertain time. The company also donated 1 million paper lunch bags to Detroit hospitals for the purpose of storing invaluable PPE.

True leadership is the ability to meet a challenge head-on, and to inspire others to do the same. The singular success of the AJM family has stemmed from a century’s worth of inspired entrepreneurial leadership. Today, the story continues.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes