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Meet Adriana Osorio, COO of Osorio Metals Supply, Inc.

Get to know Adriana, a new member of the EFBC.

Osorio Metals Supply, Inc.
Founded: 1999
Location: Chicago, IL

Tell us about your career leading up to where you are now:

My family started the business in 1992, so it has pretty much been my career from the beginning. I graduated from DePaul in 2015 where I studied business management with a concentration in entrepreneurship and have been here for the past 6 years now. It’s a family-owned business, with a total of 17 employees. I share a wall with my sister, and work with both my parents and my brother.

When I came to work here [Osorio Metals] I did not have an official role. It was just jumping in and let’s fix what we have. A lot of our processes were outdated, for example we were still using carbon copies to take orders down for customers. Remember those? The three-part ones; with the pink, yellow, and white sheets. For orders, you would do this long list of items that a customer needed, and you would put the totals and then times the quantity and then if they said “Oh no, I don’t want five, I want four” we would grab the white out, and white out everything and start over. It was just a mess. In addition, there was no inventory system, and our website was lacking. So, what I did was I rebranded the business first. I installed the point-of-sale system. And then I started building a relationship with a good accounting firm. I also worked on building a relationship with our banker so that we can continue to build capital for us to continue to grow. I don’t take credit for everything, because the hardest part was establishing the business, gathering a steady customer base, which I didn’t do. That was already done when I got here. I just focused on getting us into the 21st century. Technically, I still don’t have an official role, on paper COO, but basically, I would say I’m really into business development more than anything.

What do you like most about what you do?

I like that it’s not not monotonous. I wear a lot of hats, so I may, on one given day, touch on finance, on accounting, on sales, or even on purchasing. I find mills in Mexico and in Texas for us to get better pricing for our customers, so I’m building that relationship with these vendors. I’m currently installing another point-of-sale system because we’ve already outgrown our current system, that we set up six years ago, and I’m working on a new website. It’s always ever changing. I’m always working on another project, I’m always asking “What else the business need?” or “What else do we need to do to grow?” I am not in a role that constantly does the same work every day. Give me a project. Give me something hard. I just love being involved in a lot of things and then it’s always ever changing. Things that are challenging are what excite me.

How did you hear about the EFBC?

A good friend of ours, who’s also a vendor, Dave Westerman. He’d been telling us about this organization for years. When we would meet with him once a year for lunch, and year after year he would talk up the EFBC, and we would just say ‘yeah, okay, thanks, Dave.’ Well then recently, we attended a program, the 10,000 Small Business by Goldman Sach’s and I ran into another friend, Randy Kravitz, and I disclosed that I was looking for some help and he said ‘I am going to put you in contact with the EFBC’ so it’s kind of come full circle.

Why did you join, and what do you hope to gain from your membership?

So, when I reached out to Randy, I had a pain point. My pain point was a lot of family issues, a lot of organizational issues here at work and I said I need help. I was tired and was done trying to fix it myself. I needed outside help. I hope to gain knowledge. And what I meant by that is any sort of insight into how I can improve the business from fellow entrepreneurs who are in the same boat as I am. I’m like a sponge, I try to extract as much information I can and just soak it up. But I also hope to contribute in any which way I can. I sometimes feel like I don’t have enough experience. I’m young, I wonder “What am I going to say that’s really going to be like oh wow I learned something from her today?”, but I hope that maybe there will be something I say that will shed some light to someone. Lastly, I always love to surround myself with people that are like minded so even just making connections and building a wider network of quality individuals, of leaders, especially in family businesses, and I am excited to be a part of the EFBC!

Join us in welcoming Adriana to the EFBC community.