History
Cartonajes Salinas is a self-made company.
Since 1995, Cartonajes Salinas has endeavoured to make its mission a reality: to become a reference in the world of luxury lined rigid presentation boxes.
This leadership has been built on very strong principles of effort, investment and innovation.
It has been an intense journey to get here, just like all the other companies that have had to go through the digital transition and adapt in record time to new industry 4.0 models.
When Cartonajes Salinas was established, we were in the age of distribution, the product was the focus of our priorities, and the fundamental key to success during that period was the technification of our production plant.
Nowadays at Salinas, the entire product is manufactured using the most advanced machinery on the market, which has allowed us to be very competitive and gain an exceptionally high level of experience.
By contrast, today the client is the one at the centre, and our research is more focussed on improving their experience. A very demanding experience, which is not only limited to improving our service.
The 21st century client requires companies to make an overall commitment to their product and service, as well as to society and the environment.
In 2030, the entire workforce will essentially consist of millennials: a generation that has grown up hyper-stimulated, hyper-informed and hyper-accustomed to immediateness. Therefore, we will work on the concepts of EFFICIENCY, TRANSPARENCY and INNOVATION to successfully face another decade, without forgetting our roots as a family business.
Antonio Martínez has led this company since its creation in 1995. In his team, a group of coordinators manage the various departments (Human Resources, Customer Service, Production, Control, Development, Marketing and Design, Maintenance, Quality, Systems, Finance and Purchasing), all working together to never lose sight of the company’s integral and overall vision, strategy, or objectives.
We chat with him about the company’s past, present and future:
As such, Cartonajes Salinas was created in 1995,
but the boxes business is much older in your family, isn’t it?
That’s true, my father started to make covered boxes for the footwear sector (main industry in our area) in the 60s.
I took over the business at the beginning of the 90s, there were many changes during those years until we finally established as Cartonajes Salinas.
So at the beginning, did you only manufacture shoe boxes?
That’s right, the company was created to meet the demands of the footwear industry which was developing in Elda, and which still constitutes the biggest industry in the area. The footwear continues being an important part of our production, although the characteristics are very different from those early days.
And how did you make the final leap to other sectors?
Well, I remember that period as a hard one, we were in that conflict that many companies suffer between “renew or die”, and I felt like renewing, creating.
I remember exactly the day in which something in my head changed. It was a Sunday in 1995, we had moved to Salinas some months ago, and in December special edition of the Journal ABC (the magazine “Black & White”), I read “when Christmas approaches, famous fragrance houses launch, together with their perfumes, cases containing several products of the firm…” The following week I went to a department store and I saw it, I saw lots of sectors and products for those we could work.
From that moment, we focused on the commercial activity to make ourselves known; this was mainly in Madrid and Barcelona where the majority of the companies devoted to the Perfume and cosmetics industry were.
We were about eight years to reach our objective, to run the business in order to be able to invest in the appropriate machinery which would allow us to enter those sectors.
With hindsight, I think there are many basic aspects in the companies that have not changed much, net-working, elevator speech and marketing were also used those days although we did not call the in that way.
There are other things, like the Access to the information, which I specially value and I consider it as one of the most important agents of acceleration of the changes we have seen and lived during these years.
Since then the wheel starts rotating and the investments and changes are continuous and constant.
