GENISIS OF THE STEVE GREEN COMPANY

THE FOLLOWING IS A REPRINT FROM AN ARTICLE IN "STEAMBOAT MAGAZINE"s Winter/Spring 1993 issue entitled BOATPEOPLE (page 116) and subtitled "STEVE GREEN 'Never Run Out of Toilet Paper'"
By J. Ross Dolan

Steve Green is proof positive that a guy from Detroit with a sense of humor, a willingness to work and a green monkey logo can make it in Steamboat.  Cryptic huh?  Well, that's just the way Steve likes it -- low-key, behind the scenes and simple.

Sitting on a mountain of toilet tissue in his Twenty Mile Warehouse, Steve motions over his shoulder. "My friends joke about me being the toilet paper king."  he says good-naturedly, "but it pays the bills.  It's a niche we've found and exploited and it's worked for 15 years." (founded in 1978) 

He's right.  White vans of the Steve Green Company -- green monkey logo and "If it's in stock, we've got it" motto emblazoned on side panels -- may be seen whizzing about town daily, stopping at the back doors of restaurants, schools, condos and hotels.  The company has eleven employees and is the largest purveyor of janitorial supplies from Steamboat to Rangely and beyond.  Green hopes to keep expanding his territory by following two vital rules: "Treat your employees as if they were human and never run out of toilet paper."

Steve is one of a cadre of enterprising "ski-bum" types who came to Steamboat and stayed to build a good life and a successful business.

Steve spent four years at the University of Denver and left with a degree in, get ready .... philosophy.  He arrived in Steamboat shortly after graduating in 1969 and Steve quickly put his degree to work -- skiing and waiting tables.  Time marched on ... Kierkegaard and Kant receded into the past.

I was getting on toward 30 and I was still trying to figure out what I was going to be," he says candidly.  "There was no local warehouse servicing the janitorial supply business and I really wasn't that great of an employee, so I went into business for myself."

With the ignorance of youth and an overdose of natural optimism, Steve began approaching local businesses, asking if he could supply their janitorial needs.  "It was a totally 'unfunded' business.  It was launched, literally, on a tank of gas." he remembers.  Steve would get the orders, run to Denver in his VW Rabbit, fill them, collect the money and run back for another order.  So it went until he became a sort of ski-town Horatio Alger. His company's service was good, the competition tolerant and the orders grew.

And the Monkey?

Steve says the need for a logo, promotional materials -- a corporate identity -- soon became unavoidable.  "Who gets excited about a trash can liner? I needed something people would remember."  he recalls.  He takes pride in the fact that he services the valley's working folk.  "The people I deal with -- housekeepers, maintenance and restaurant employees -- work hard for a living and I like working with them," he says.

For Steve Green, Steamboat is home.  It's where skiing brought him, a good business keeps him, and a grinning green chimp leads the way.