The Briefing: The Boss’ Management Strategy When Gina Catan-Eckstein and her sister Ivette Catan-Helfend were starting Linx & More Inc., their imported Italian bracelet business, they knew they’d have to look for another manufacturer if their bracelet business was going to take off. The daughters of a jeweler, the sisters were amazed by the popularity of bracelets made of stretchy, spring-coiled metal links during a trip to Europe. But once their business began to grow, they realized they’d have to have a manufacturer that could handle the load and the variety of bracelets. With a company that would later grow from $370,000 in sales in 2000 to $8.5 million in 2001 the sisters realized a new factory would have to be ready for rapid growth. But after a trip to Italy and visits to factory after factory, the sisters knew it would not be an easy task to find the right manufacturer. Catan-Eckstein realized that it would be a matter of months before their current manufacturer would be unable to fill their growing number of orders. But after some months of reviewing manufacturers’ proposals and qualify of work, Catan-Eckstein was able to solve the problem. She spoke to Business Journal reporter Carlos Martinez about the issue. “When we started the business we were dealing with one manufacturer and we knew we had to find a better manufacturer. “There were a lot of things we needed to do when it came to manufacturing. We couldn’t just use what they were making. The charms had to be custom designs. Like they’d have black and white soccer balls, but we needed red and white for the American market. “We were growing very fast, but we had to look at things very objectively and make the right decision for the company and our customers. We had to go to Italy and go to each and every factory and talk to as many people as we could. We couldn’t stay here and just look at samples. “So we flew to Italy few times to test out a few factories and some were good and some weren’t, but we found some we really liked. “After we came back home, we were looking through a lot of samples and we narrowed things down to a few. But we still were undecided. But it worked out. We decided to go with five different factories. “I thought that we’d try them and see how it worked, and we’d take it from there, and it worked because the ones that couldn’t turn out enough bracelets or couldn’t meet our deadlines, we let go. “It’s very hard when you’re working with someone in another country. You have to get their samples, examine them and then send them back with how you want them done, so it’s very time consuming. “But it turned out great. And the best thing was that we found that we didn’t want to keep all our eggs in one basket. So if one had a shipping problem, the other would be fine. “It was great because we kept things coming in even if we increased our orders, the orders kept coming in even if one factory had a problem.”