October 2012
| Business World Magazine | 177
by Willie Portnoy in Orangeburg, South
Carolina. As the business has grown, it has
moved closer to Colombia, the state capital.
Portnoy came from a background as a met-
als trader, and originally the company used
those skills topurchasematerialsmainly from
overseas. As it evolved and grew; Charleston
has moved further downstream, first into a
“
master distributor” and then into a full line
metals service center.
“
In recent years we’ve moved andmore
into becoming a full line service centre,” says
COO Dean Blakeney. “We realized that we
could not only sell to other distributors, that
