
When Detroit-area entrepreneur Vladimir Gendelman was growing up in the Soviet Union, his mother often reminded him, “We are not rich enough to buy cheap things.”
Cutting corners, his mother believed, might save money upfront, but it often led to greater costs over time.
That principle would become the foundation of Gendelman’s business philosophy: Invest in quality. Provide long-term value. It has been guiding him since he launched his presentation folder boutique, Company Folders, Inc., in 2003. It helped him grow the business into a highly successful, multimillion-dollar operation that made Inc. magazine’s list of 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in America for three consecutive years. And it helped him get orders from major U.S. universities, government organizations, and companies including Google, MGM, and the NFL.

Gendelman says he purchases the best materials possible for Company Folders’ products, from paper stocks to inks, and he backs each product with either a 365-day or a lifetime warranty. But his dedication to excellence extends beyond products to every aspect of his business, including customer service. He believes that overlooking customer needs or risking their business is a luxury he can’t afford.
“That long-term mindset is probably one of the most important things because it guides all of your decision making,” he said. “You never have to spend a lot of time thinking about it, because the answer is always clear: If something comes up, you just take care of it.”
Gendelman, who now shares his business insights as a writer for Forbes, Inc., Fortune, and Crain’s Detroit Business, acknowledges that achieving the budget and expertise he enjoys today took time — and plenty of trial and error.
From Famine to Feast
It would be fair to say that Gendelman didn’t grow up with entrepreneurial success stories to inspire him, at least not close to home. In Soviet Ukraine, people were not exactly rewarded for developing innovative, user-friendly products. The result was a chronic shortage of consumer goods and a lack of variety in the products that were available.
“Everybody had the same stuff,” Gendelman said. “There might have been some variety. Take wall covering; there might have been five different kinds. One or two were completely hideous, but the other three were what you’d find in everybody’s house. The same thing goes for pots and pans and cutlery and plates and clothing. Maybe there’d be three choices in some categories, in others, maybe 10.
“There was no way to express yourself. And in communism, you don’t want to stand out, because it’s frowned upon. The more you can blend in, the better. That was the essence of everyday life during communism.”
Gendelman remembers being stunned by the vast ocean of consumer choices he saw when he came to the United States at age 16.
“There is a variety of everything to the overwhelming point,” he said. “You want cheese? There are 90 different kinds. The same with sausage. Clothing. Everything. We’re looking at thousands of different varieties.”
Maybe that’s why it caught Gendelman’s attention years later when he set out to find some nice presentation folders — and realized the options were surprisingly limited.
“I was repairing computers at the time, and a customer said, ‘Hey, you’re a computer guy. Can you help me get a nice company folder?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ How hard could that be? It was late 2002, and the internet was in full swing. So I go online to start looking, and there is no variety. Everybody offers your white folded two pockets or one pocket, printed with color, and that’s it.
“Then at some point, it dawned on me: America was the Soviet Union when it came to presentation folders.”
Someone needed to fix that, he thought. Maybe it could be him. The following year Gendelman launched Company Folders.
Crash Course in Entrepreneurship
Gendelman had the insight to recognize a need he could meet, but his initial vision for achieving that goal was a bit murkier.
“I had absolutely no business experience. I had absolutely no goals other than one: I wanted to provide people with a variety of presentation folders that would help them, meaning their companies, stand out and express themselves and present their brand the way it’s supposed to be delivered.”

His primary strategy was to get one customer. That, he felt, would grow to two, then four, and so on.
Gendelman did get that first customer, but growing Company Folders was not an easy journey. In many cases, his early practices flew in the face of conventional wisdom for running a business. That included the way he came up with money to start and run his company. He relied on credit cards that offered 0% interest for 12-18 months. When the interest-free period wound down on one card, he’d get a new card and transfer the balance.
“I played that game for years until I paid everything off without paying interest,” Gendelman said.
His hiring practices, once he was ready to bring in employees, weren’t exactly by the book, either.
“I would bring people in for an interview. I would talk to them, and if I felt it was a good hire, a good person, I hired them like on the spot, which obviously is the wrong way to do it,” Gendelman said. “We don’t do it that way now, but I actually got a few amazing hires that are still with me. As a matter of fact, we have numerous people who’ve been with us for over 15 years, and probably more than half of our people have been with the company for over 10 years.”
One of Gendelman’s most painful chapters as an entrepreneur stemmed from hiring what turned out to be a less-than-effective search engine optimization (SEO) service to help Company Folders rank higher in internet searches.
“They added content to our website that wasn’t really good,” he said. “Also, they put in some links that later turned out to be bad. Then in 2012, we got penalized by Google, and we lost 76% of our traffic. That was a big challenge. I was actually contemplating bankruptcy, but what kept me going was my team; they were willing to fight to bring it back. It took us a little over a year, but we got out of that.
“That was a big challenge, but challenges come up every day. Over time, you just start looking at it as part of doing business.”
More than 20 years after launching Company Folders, Gendelman is taking those challenges in stride. And he has the hard-won knowledge necessary to overcome them. Even so, his primary goal has not changed.
“There is only one mission, the exact same one I had on day one: providing people with marketing materials that help them stand out so they can deliver their brand the way it’s supposed to be delivered.
“Every time I talk to a customer, and they tell me how great the product we created for them is, how easy the process was, or how this person they talked to was great, that is the rewarding part. And that is worth everything.”
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