May/June 1994
It’s a small world after all—at least that’s how it seems to Irving Ehrenhaus, whose small company is an undeniable presence on the international scrap scene.
By Nancy L. Gast
Nancy L. Gast is assistant editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
It's been said that companies today lack the "personal touch"—that business has turned into a maze of faxes, computer mail, and the "I'll-have-my-people-call-your-people" mentality. But that's not Irving Ehrenhaus's way.
Ehrenhaus is Glenrich Metals International Inc. (Forest Hills, N.Y.), a small scrap firm bent on proving that the business world really can be a small and personalized world. In fact, Ehrenhaus says proudly, "I've become a friend to everyone I've ever done business with."
Considering that the bulk of his company's work is international in nature—trading scrap, mostly aluminum and red metals, around the globe—that's no easy feat. After all, international firms face geographic, cultural, and language barriers that can magnify an impersonal business climate. But being able to conduct business on a more-intimate level is an important part of what distinguishes Glenrich Metals from the many other international scrap trading firms, Ehrenhaus asserts, and he intends to do what it takes to maintain that position.
Old World Beginnings
Scrap wasn't exactly his family’s business, but you might say it's in Ehrenhaus's blood.
His father, Mark, was an apprentice at a metals company in Berlin before emigrating to the United States in the late 1930s. This early career apparently influenced the older Ehrenhaus. When Irving graduated from the School of Commerce and Finance at New York University (New York City) in 1963, his father encouraged him to apply for a position with Philipp Brothers (New York City)—then one of the largest and most influential metal trading firms in the country. (The company merged with Salomon Brothers, also of New York City, in 1981.)
While many firms at that time were verging on today's style of business, Philipp Brothers was in many ways still an "old world" company, Ehrenhaus recalls. During his job interview, for example, company higher-ups told him, "Don't worry, we won't hold it against you that you went to college." No quip, that—the German-rooted company still was a believer of the apprentice system, and some of its group vice presidents had literally worked their way up from the mailroom. Ehrenhaus appreciates that philosophy, noting that a diploma doesn't prove much in industries like metals trading. "College teaches you how to think, not how to do," he says.
The doing part of his education got a big start in his seven years with Philipp Brothers. His first position was in the accounting department, and from there he moved to the company's traffic division, where he eventually took charge of transporting commodities and handling payments. Ehrenhaus ultimately worked his way up to assistant trader, a position that offered him his first direct dealings with overseas companies—trading steel, rutile, zircon, tantalum, and beryllium ores. In all of these jobs, he says, he kept a close eye on every proceeding and became savvy at the financial, logistical, and business aspects of the metals business. "Without the experience I earned at Philipp Brothers, I wouldn't be able to do what I do today," he says.
Ironically, the man who would make a name for himself—and a business of his own—in nonferrous scrap never dealt with it while at Philipp Brothers, but not because it didn't interest him. "I thought scrap held such variety and diversity. It's never the same," Ehrenhaus recalls. This attraction to scrap, in fact, was one factor that eventually led him to leave Philipp Brothers for a small exporter of nonferrous scrap.
Have Scrap, Will Travel
After four years with the new company, during which he mostly handled aluminum scrap, Ehrenhaus was offered the opportunity to open a New York office for a West Coast trading company that dealt in nonferrous scrap. "I think [the Californians] just didn't want to be in the office at 6 a.m. to talk to Europe," he jokingly explains. "I could do business with Europe at 9 or 10 in the morning from New York." Whatever the rationale, the experience cemented his interest in the international scrap trade and planted a seed in his head about "trekking out on my own," as he puts it.
Thus was born Glenrich Metals in 1976—and a whole new world, literally, opened up for Ehrenhaus. As a company unto himself, he started "heavy-duty" traveling overseas, visiting consumers to introduce his new company and attending conferences of the Bureau International de la Recuperation (Brussels, Belgium) in Europe, Asia, and North America.
In the years since those early days, Ehrenhaus is proud to say, he's hit just about every comer of the globe and he still loves traveling. "I've been tremendously educated," he says about his experiences abroad. "The average American knows very little about the life and customs overseas."
He's shared the knowledge in international trade and customs he's gained in travels with his fellow U.S. scrap recyclers over the years through participation in the industry's trade associations. Ehrenhaus's familiarity with scrap specification usage abroad, for instance, has been put to use on the nonferrous division specifications committee of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) (Washington, D.C.). Prior to ReMA's formation, he served as president of the foreign trade division of the National Association of Recycling Industries, the New York City-based ReMA predecessor organization.
A Changing Marketplace
For the first few years of Glenrich Metals's existence, most of Ehrenhaus's international dealings were with European firms, because that's where most of the overseas scrap action was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then the tide of world economics turned to Asia, and Ehrenhaus found himself more often working with buyers in the Far East, particularly in Japan. In fact, Itochu (Tokyo), one of Japan's largest trading houses, kept Glenrich Metals busy throughout the 1980s and early 1990s as its buying agent for aluminum scrap.
The global scrap market "changes so dramatically, so rapidly," as Ehrenhaus puts it, that he hasn't concentrated on a particular region in recent years. Indeed, the world economy is so unpredictable that Glenrich Metals has been more domestically oriented in the past few years than in its entire history.
Does the scrap trader see an international market upswing en route? "One never knows" is his discreet reply. "Nothing ever stays the same in this business." As an example, he points to the opening of the former Soviet Union, which is enabling Japan to purchase materials from the former Eastern Bloc countries at lower market prices than what are available from the West. "The consumers of the world are always ready for a bargain," he says.
The Personal Touch Ahead
Despite the uncertainties of the market, Glenrich Metals has managed to stay afloat, even as some of its Goliaths of competitors have disappeared from the scene. Ehrenhaus attributes this steadiness to two factors: the intimacy of personally knowing all of his clients and his ability to operate under a tight budget—a task virtually impossible for the big international trading houses to achieve, he believes. Then there's the fact that in the nearly 20-year history of his company, he says, he's never broken a contract or failed to follow through on a deal.
Ehrenhaus plans to use these same business practices to help ensure his company's survival in the coming years. While that likely means Glenrich Metals will never be a major stop on the "information highway," Ehrenhaus isn't out to transform his company into a giant. Instead, he'd rather do business with old friends—and new ones—in what he hopes will be a bright future. •
It’s a small world after all--at least that’s how it seems to Irving Ehrenhaus, whose small company is an undeniable presence on the international scrap scene.