Seastone founder focuses on customers

Warren Osborn found success in several businesses by asking himself what his target customer wanted and then filling that niche.

In 2002, this serial entrepreneur founded Seastone, a Provo-based firm that manufactured the tin-box packaging used by AOL Time Warner in its direct-mail campaigns. During Seastone's first year in business, the company produced 40 million tin boxes. But in the next year, AOL awarded the business to a lower bidder, devastating Seastone.

Osborn's response was typical: "Let's look at what AOL really wants."

He decided the mammoth company's real goal was to sell more products and services. So he decided to turn Seastone into a packaging shop that would provide designs so innovative that AOL — and other customers — would have to use its services.

Under Osborn's direction, Seastone wasted no time: in six months, the company turned out 150 finished packaging concepts. That year, Seastone grew by 500 percent.

Today, Seastone continues to innovate. Osborn spun off the company's Blu-ray disc-case business, left the direct-mail packaging field and concentrated Seastone's efforts on the gift-card packaging industry. That focus has helped the company to 800 percent growth over the past three years.

Osborn stays ahead of the competition in a fast-changing arena by continually nurturing Seastone's culture of design and innovation, patenting many of the company's designs and bringing new concepts to market faster than anyone else.

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