Get to know Eva Decespedes, Associate Sales Manager at Adenna. Check out the video or transcript below to hear why she’s passionate about the work that she does, learn about how increased demand during COVID impacted her team, and get her insights on where she sees the industry heading.
Tell us about Adenna and the work that you do.
Eva: So we are a manufacturer, producer, converter of wiping cloth products. And when I say wiping cloths I’m talking about cloth rags, disposable wipers, microfiber anything that would be considered a cloth of some sort. We’re also Kimberly Clark’s largest competitor in the marketplace. So we go hard against KC all the time. We’re also a leading supplier of gloves. And when I say gloves I’m talking disposable gloves. We’ve been a leading supplier of gloves in the US for a very long time now, 26-plus years, but we also have in addition to disposable gloves. We also have cut-resistant gloves, coated gloves, mechanics gloves.
Another thing also, that’s a little unique about us in comparison to our competitors, we are a leading manufacturer and supplier of restroom items, not towel and tissue but items like your vended femme high products. We’re the leader in the US in North America for the vended machines and the tampons all of that. Um, your Femme High products that go into a public bathroom.
We are a leader in order control. So metered aerosols. The sprays are you know how people know it mostly. Urinal screens anything under order control as well as chemicals like facility supply chemicals. We aquired a couple of companies throughout the years that have also made us really strong in that, you know facilities chemical arena.
Clean room. We acquired over the last three, four years, we acquired two clean room companies. A lot of the clean room products are produced here in the US and clean room is something that’s used in a lot of manufacturing areas not just pharmaceutical. People think of pharmaceutical and medical only but even automotive manufacturing for example uses clean room. So we’re a little unique to everybody else in the market because we have such a strong core of products and a unique bundle.
Olivia: That definitely is unique. So what is it that you do?
Eva: So I am a regional sales manager. I manage the Midwest territory and the Southeast. I’m also the associate sales manager, so I’m kind of not really the sales manager, but I’m the middle between us and our EVP. I work really closely with the team if we have like a strategy that we’re trying to you know, put into work and we want to grow a certain segment or certain territory or we have distributors that we really want to look at as strategic partners. I work closely with our sales team to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and get those strategic moves going.
Why do you love the work that you do and the industry that you work in?
Eva: Um, you know, I’ve been in it for a really long time and we’re really solutions driven. I’m kind of that way also in my personality. I always like to help people and I always want to just be like that person that gives you like a different view on how you can do it. Well, maybe you can do it this way. Maybe you can improve it by doing it this way and really as a company that’s what we do. We’re solutions driven.
We work really closely with our distributors going into the end users and just driving that business through the distributor and I love getting into an end user. The manufacturing plants are my favorite. Automotive is my favorite. Just going in there and seeing what they’re using. Kind of having Alternatives that I can offer to them. And even if it’s the same, you know the same type of product, I still I’m gonna offer them a savings. So it’s about making their jobs better and easier in my opinion. So I don’t know I’ve done it forever. So it’s what I love.
Where do you see the industry heading in the next year and even beyond?
Eva: That’s interesting because we’re always reading articles and we’re always looking to see where the industrial channel is going. Everything I read consistently says that it’s going to keep going up. It’s going to keep growing. I know right now, it’s a little tricky and this year people still don’t know what this year’s gonna look like. The economy is tricky but everything I’ve read consistently says it’s going in that direction.
Um, as far as our categories go, we’re gonna be strong and we’re gonna keep growing as a company because the majority of our categories have to do with cleaning and disinfecting. Um, also PPE a lot of protection. I forgot to mention this but we also have a full line of PPE products that we’ve always been a core supplier of so you’re still seeing movement and a need for cleaning, disinfecting, and protection.
So all of that we think it’s gonna keep growing and then consistently the industrial market, I think it’s gonna stay strong. Even if there are rumors that there might be some kind of a bad economy this year. I don’t know that we’re going to really see that.
Olivia: I’m curious, this isn’t one of my questions but I’m curious how busy were you guys during COVID?
Eva: Oh my God, you know I don’t know how we survived it. Stress was crazy. We were already really strong on gloves. Um, we were really strong on masks because we’re also a leading supplier in the medical and dental industries all through distribution. We are the number one glove in the tattoo market. So we’ve got some gloves that tattoo distributors sell to tattoo artists. We have film. All of these products are about protecting and you know infection control.
So with COVID, we worked late nights. We worked weekends. We couldn’t keep up. Gloves went on allocation. That was a nightmare. Trying to explain to a customer, it’s not that I don’t want to give you what you need, we don’t have enough to give you. And trying to protect all the customers that were already on the books. Versus all the new guys trying to come in we were like no we can’t support you. We have to take care of our customers first. It was a nightmare. Um, we kind of joke that we have. We’re just coming off of that nightmare and we probably have some kind of trauma from it. Yeah, it was rough.
What do you like to do outside of work for fun?
Eva: So I am a huge Disney fan. We live 20 minutes away from Disney. It’s awesome. Yeah, we’re huge fans. So even on the nights that I’m working past five if there’s even an hour still left in the park, sometimes we’ll go for dinner. We’ll go get out on. We have a joke, my husband will be like, we haven’t gotten our steps in today, let’s go to Magic Kingdom. So we are in the Parks three to four times a week. When it’s not too hot, we like to take either a bike ride around the neighborhood or walk, but really the majority of the time, we are in some type of Disney property.
