`Stephen Mandia, Sovena USA - Olive Oil Times
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Stephen Mandia, Sovena USA

By Lara Camozzo
Jun. 10, 2011 18:46 UTC
Summary Summary

Steve Mandia rec­og­nized the need for a local pres­ence in the U.S. olive oil mar­ket after strug­gling to adapt to American cus­tomers’ needs while work­ing in Italy. He founded East Coast Olive Oil Corporation in 1991, which has since grown to become one of the largest importers of olive oil in the United States, even­tu­ally sell­ing part of the com­pany to Sovena Group in 2005 and renam­ing it Sovena USA.

Just over 20 years ago, when the olive oil mar­ket was on the cusp of major growth in the United States, Steve Mandia was liv­ing in Imperia, Italy, while work­ing for the com­pany Oleificio Borelli Spa. After a few years of immer­sion in the Italian olive oil indus­try, Mandia rec­og­nized a need for change.

“I under­stood that Italy was a very large importer, proces­sor, and pack­ager of olive oil, but a local pres­ence was needed in the mar­ket in order to suc­cess­fully dis­trib­ute to a world­wide cus­tomer base.” Mandia recalls the dif­fi­culty he had work­ing within the Italian olive oil busi­ness, ​“I was work­ing for an exporter and was in charge of sell­ing to the U.S., Canada, and other English-speak­ing coun­tries. We had a dif­fi­cult time sell­ing to the ever-chang­ing cus­tomers in the U.S. because we didn’t have a pres­ence there and weren’t able to adapt to the needs of the local mar­ket.”

“The United States cus­tomer is more about ser­vice than any­thing else,” says Mandia. ​“They can’t wait for trans­porta­tion issues or the sup­ply of pack­ag­ing to become avail­able — you have to have the prod­uct when they want it at the qual­ity that they want.” Mandia real­ized that ser­vic­ing the cus­tomer at the local level was the key to suc­cess. ​“By bring­ing the prod­uct directly from the source to the cus­tomer base, we’d be able to ser­vice the cus­tomer much bet­ter locally than abroad. I saw a great oppor­tu­nity for a com­pany in the United States.”

In 1991, Mandia founded East Coast Olive Oil Corporation. He saw the best oppor­tu­nity with major cus­tomers, as plenty of small importers were already buy­ing and sell­ing olive oil within their local mar­kets. It was the large man­u­fac­tur­ers of food prod­ucts in the U.S. that Mandia was after.

“While we bought olive oil from Italy, we pri­mar­ily sourced from other coun­tries — Tunisia, Turkey, and Spain — as the Italians were doing. We started off sell­ing bulk and pri­vate label to the food­ser­vice indus­try,” sup­ply­ing com­pa­nies like Ragu Spaghetti Sauce and Pam Olive Oil Spray, ​“that’s the kind of mar­ket we struc­tured our busi­ness around.”

At the incep­tion of East Coast Olive Oil, Mandia says the mar­ket in the U.S. was capped off at 50,000 met­ric tons. Today it has reached approx­i­mately 300,000 met­ric tons. ​“The eth­nic con­sumer has always been con­sum­ing olive oil and will con­tinue to do so. The explo­sion of olive oil in the U.S. mar­ket was due to the non-eth­nic con­sumer com­ing to the real­iza­tion that there’s a health ben­e­fit to olive oil and the Mediterranean diet.”

East Coast Olive Oil pin­pointed its tar­get cus­tomer at just the right time. ​“It was the late 80s, early 90s when the growth rate in the U.S. olive oil mar­ket really took off.” The tim­ing was every­thing. ​“Obviously, I think we did a great job cap­tur­ing the mar­ket, but hav­ing a mar­ket grow­ing by dou­ble-digit per­cent­ages in any given year helped us suc­ceed.”

Over time, East Coast Olive Oil began expand­ing the com­pany. ​“When we started, there were only a few of us run­ning the com­pany,” Mandia recalls. After sev­eral acqui­si­tions, East Coast Olive Oil had branched out from bulk and pri­vate label to branded prod­ucts. ​“We were very aggres­sive in grow­ing our busi­ness. In 1995, when the com­pany was rather dor­mant, we bought Gem Oil, which gave us a brand and a very large cus­tomer base in the North East. We also acquired Puglia Brand, which was a sta­ple prod­uct in the metro New York and New Jersey area.”

In 2003, the com­pany acquired a New England based bou­tique com­pany called California Olive Oils that spe­cial­ized in extra vir­gin olive oil, fla­vored oils, and veg­etable oils. By pro­mot­ing their new brands and expand­ing their prod­uct line, East Coast Olive Oil gained a strong foothold in the mar­ket­place. ​“We’ve been lucky to grow with some of these small com­pa­nies,” says Mandia who cred­its the finan­cial strength of his com­pany to these acqui­si­tions and to the con­sol­i­da­tion of facil­i­ties. ​“We took down pack­ing facil­i­ties that we didn’t use and rolled this rev­enue into the com­pany with­out the over­head.”

There have also been chal­lenges along the way. ​“The chal­lenge is always try­ing to sell a qual­ity prod­uct in a mar­ket that doesn’t always sell qual­ity prod­ucts.” Mandia says the company’s goal has always been to edu­cate the cus­tomer. ​“Once they phys­i­cally know the dif­fer­ences in qual­ity and have a sense of secu­rity with what they’re buy­ing, if we’re able to ser­vice them well enough, I’ve found you can keep a cus­tomer for a long period of time.”

Of course, the chal­lenges in the begin­ning greatly dif­fer from the chal­lenges the com­pany expe­ri­ences today. ​“In evolv­ing a small com­pany into a big­ger com­pany you have the chal­lenge of run­ning a day-to-day busi­ness — mak­ing sure you staff your com­pany with pro­fes­sional peo­ple, being able to ser­vice the cus­tomers in an ever-chang­ing envi­ron­ment (from sell­ing pri­mar­ily bulk to pro­duc­ing our own pri­vate label bot­tles) and con­tin­u­ously stay­ing ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion curve.”

“There are two sides to this busi­ness,” says Mandia. ​“One is the sourc­ing side, and the other is the sales side. We really sep­a­rated our­selves by first of all being here, and sec­ondly by the prod­ucts and the pack­ag­ing offer­ings that we sell.” Today the com­pany offers organic oils, mono-vari­etals, refined oils, and spe­cialty oils all in dif­fer­ent types of pack­ag­ing — from a 250 mL bot­tle to bulk oil and every­thing in between. ​“We are a one-stop-shop,” says Mandia, ​“we’ve really dom­i­nated in that mar­ket.”

Two decades or so later, much has changed. When Mandia started in the olive oil busi­ness most cus­tomers were local importers buy­ing a con­tainer at a time from a com­pany in Italy. Today, Mandia’s com­pany has grown from a few founders to one of the largest importers of olive oil in the United States.

“We can offer the same val­ues for some­one who used to order a con­tainer at a time. Instead of buy­ing $20,000 worth of prod­uct, they can buy $5,000 on a weekly basis.” Mandia refers to this way of dis­tri­b­u­tion and logis­tics as the ​“Walmart mode,” say­ing that ​“peo­ple want quick returns on their prod­uct; they want it deliv­ered on a spe­cific day, not within a win­dow of 10 days to 2 weeks. That’s the secret to our suc­cess — being able to ser­vice that very defined need for dif­fer­ent cus­tomers.”

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But the biggest change that East Coast Olive Oil has seen over the years came in 2005 when Mandia decided to sell part of the com­pany to the Sovena Group, a Portuguese com­pany and one of the world’s largest olive oil pro­duc­ers. In 2007, East Coast Olive Oil was renamed Sovena USA. ​“The busi­ness had grown tremen­dously,” explains Mandia. ​“We were run­ning the busi­ness out of 3 dif­fer­ent facil­i­ties, and we needed an invest­ment in a new facil­ity. I was look­ing for an indus­trial part­ner to help the busi­ness grow.” Above all, Mandia was look­ing for a European part­ner because he believed this would help the com­pany not only in sourc­ing, prod­uct knowl­edge, and exper­tise, but also for the image of the com­pany.

“Part of the deal for me was gain­ing more pro­fes­sion­als within the orga­ni­za­tion that offered a cer­tain level of exper­tise. It’s not easy to find an olive oil expert here in the U.S., we just don’t have an indus­try to pull from. Bringing some­one in who’s well versed in olive oil — like our direc­tor of qual­ity assur­ance of Sovena USA, Gabi Estevez, from Seville, Spain — is very help­ful; it helps edu­cate our cus­tomers.”

By join­ing forces with Sovena, Mandia feels he was able to bridge the gap between his com­pany and the mar­ket over­seas. ​“When you grow an orga­ni­za­tion, you can’t grow it all by your­self. You need to imple­ment a man­age­ment team to help bring you to the next level. I think Sovena was the right choice for me,” says Mandia, adding ​“Today, Sovena USA, which is located in Rome, New York, has the fore­most pack­ag­ing facil­ity in the U.S. by far.” Other Sovena facil­i­ties are located in Portugal, Spain, and Tunisia, which gives the cus­tomer a lot of choices, ​“Whether they want to buy prod­uct packed directly in Spain, or be able to buy directly from our facil­ity, I think we can encom­pass anybody’s needs within our orga­ni­za­tion.”

Looking toward the future, Mandia sees great poten­tial for growth. ​“If you look at the olive oil con­sump­tion here in the U.S. com­pared to other indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries, our con­sump­tion is still very low. I think that the IOC (International Olive Council) has rec­og­nized that and is will­ing to invest in pro­mot­ing extra vir­gin olive oil here in North America, which will help this next growth come in our indus­try.”

Mandia believes he’s taken his com­pany to the top when it comes to qual­ity, qual­ity con­trols, and pack­ag­ing abil­i­ties. ​“Today Sovena is the sin­gle largest grower of olive trees for extra vir­gin olive oil in the world. Having that cra­dle to grave logis­tics — tak­ing an olive from an olive tree and putting it into a bot­tle and onto the shelf — will cer­tainly sep­a­rate us from the rest of the com­pe­ti­tion.”

Steve Mandia stud­ied Business at Bentley University just out­side of Boston, Massachusetts. During this time he also spent a semes­ter study­ing at Richmond College in London which he says gave him a chance to travel around Europe and become com­fort­able with the dif­fer­ent mon­e­tary exchanges and the feel­ing of liv­ing in a for­eign place. ​“Looking back I’ve always said that was an edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence that really opened my eyes to the world itself,” he says.

While Mandia con­sid­ers him­self a ​“full-blown American” at this point, his roots trace back to Italy. His fam­ily has lost touch with their rel­a­tives in Italy. Nevertheless, Mandia and his tight-knit Italian fam­ily con­tinue to carry on cer­tain tra­di­tions. ​“I grew up vis­it­ing my grandmother’s house every Sunday for break­fast which included olive oil — meat­balls fried in olive oil, fresh-made bread for dip­ping in olive oil — it was all about the olive oil back in the day,” says Mandia.

“I remem­ber my grand­mother kept a big gal­lon can of olive oil under the sink, and my grand­fa­ther would always have a big plate of veg­eta­bles with olive oil, salt and pep­per.” Today, the mem­o­ries and the olive oil still flow in rich abun­dance as the Mandia fam­ily con­tin­ues their Sunday tra­di­tion. ​“I’m 47 years old, and I still go every Sunday to my grandmother’s for the same feast. We have 4 gen­er­a­tions — my grand­mother, my father, uncles, myself and my broth­ers, and our kids — and we still enjoy that rou­tine.”

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