COMERICA
BANK – TEXAS MARKET
The Texas
Market of Comerica Bank includes 68 banking centers in the key Texas marketsof Dallas, Houston and Austin. |
GULF WINDS INTERNATIONAL
You don’t need to tell Steve Stewart about the benefits of an increasingly global economy. Every customer he has either imports or exports something from the Port of Houston.
Stewart is president and co-owner of Gulf Winds International, a third-party logistics provider to the shipping industry. Under that logistics umbrella, the company specializes in warehousing and related services, as well as distribution services for the international shipping community.
Gulf Winds, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, operates six warehouse facilities in Houston, which total about 1.5 million square feet of storage and handling space.
“For the last five or six years, our growth rate has been 25-30 percent a year. No doubt some of this growth is a result of the ever-increasing traffic seen at The Port of Houston. However, our ability to attract key employees, including reliable and safe drivers, continues to give us the competitive advantage to grow our market share,” explains Stewart.
“When we started out as a small business, I wore out my knee pads trying to get a bank to give us a small business loan. Eventually we found a bank that gave us a small line of credit, but we were growing too fast for them. They couldn’t comprehend our business model. They weren’t familiar with the transportation industry. Comerica, however, has a middle market group and we fit within that framework quite nicely. They came in, took a look at our books, interviewed us, and determined that we were exactly the kind of company that they wanted to work with. So we began our relationship with Comerica in February of 2003. Once we had a reliable and aggressive banking partner, things really started to happen for us. Frankly, our growth wouldn’t have happened without Comerica, who gave us the financing and financial strength to do what we needed to do.”