Moe Boukadida grew up in Tunisia, North Africa, attended college in Russia, is fluent in four languages, and calls Buffalo "home".
The owner of the American rights to Shark Energy Drink started his first entrepreneurial venture long ago, at the age of 13, and with the exception of a few glitches that furthered his business sense, he has soared upward ever since.
"I started my first venture when I was 13. My friend's father sold computers, and I would buy parts from him and sell them to my friends for a little profit. When I was 14 or 15, I started selling whole computers," Boukadida said. "At 16, I started a DJ business, doing clubs, parties, weddings. At 17, I opened a clothing store."
Boukadida's father was a professor, who didn't necessarily see his son's growing business acumen to be the life he wished for him. After all, the elder Boukadida reasoned, many a businessman can go belly-up, but a scholar is educated forever. Though the teenaged Boukadida—who typically had several hundred dollars in his pocket at any given time—was reluctant to, he made good with his father by selling the store and moving to Russia to join his brother, an engineering student, in order to attend college.
"When I got there," Boukadida said, "my brother took all of my money." It wasn't thievery, but an attempt to put his younger brother on an even playing field with his peers. "Life in Russia was hard," he said. "I really had to scrape." The money was eventually returned, but the hunger its absence caused gave Boukadida the impetus to get through with school fast and back to doing what he did best, namely earning a living.
Two years later, after acquiring an associate's degree and marrying an American girl, Boukadida ended up in East Aurora, NY, working at Fisher-Price Toys. "I was in customer service where my French came in handy with Canadians, but people with southern accents were hard for me. My English wasn't that good, and naming all of the little pieces that went with the toys was a nightmare," Boukadida said. Though he jokes that he was waiting to be fired, he says that he became very good at what he did, with the possible exception of when people would call with personal questions about Barbie dolls that couldn't be answered and became the "story of the day" in the break room.
Aside from improving his English, Boukadida became depressed working the phones. "I didn't see a future. It was a good quick-fix, but I tried for other jobs within the company and didn't get them," he lamented. Then the Christmas season came, and Boukadida, a non-Christian, was presented with a nativity set by his employers. "I made $70 on eBay with it, and it was an eye-opener," he said.
"I started buying toys—the hot stuff—and reselling them on eBay and Amazon. It was a blast—awesome!" Boukadida said. "I felt successful again, and I wasn't answering questions about a torn UNO card." Then the holiday season ended and so did the selling opportunities where toys were concerned.
"I had to find other things to sell. I bought and sold Palm Pilots and Play Stations, buying small lots and selling them individually. Then I bought a half truckload of small electronics. We had so many boxes in our apartment that it was impossible to get to the bathroom," Boukadida laughed. "Then there were the 1,000 Ab-Energizers that didn't work. They were painful in fact," he said of the belts that delivered small electric shocks.
Next came an affiliation with a professor Boukadida had taken a business course through at UB. Joseph Han allowed Boukadida to use the warehouse he ran his landscaping business out of until that also got too small. Through trial and error, Boukadida grew savvy about buying and selling until he finally took over almost the entire sixth floor of the Seneca Industrial Warehouse.
"Business was good. I went there every morning with a purpose, and I felt good that I provided jobs for 60-plus employees. It made me want to grow," Boukadida said. And then eBay cut ties. "We were flooding the market. Moving 6,000 to 8,000 pieces per week. eBay was pressured by other sellers to get rid of us, and Christmas was coming. Two days before Thanksgiving in 2006, it all ended."
Boukadida becomes very somber when he recounts the days in which he had to let some employees go, reduce others to minimum wage and pay others in merchandise. "I get close to my employees," he said, "and it hurt. We worked night and day, planting brochures and handing out fliers for direct buy. I stopped taking a salary, and I was very depressed. Then one day I walked into the office, and my employees had a surprise party waiting for me with cake and beer and gifts. Believe me, I cried." But this unwelcome juncture is when Boukadida claims he got his most valuable lesson in negotiating skills. He also found that he could do things smaller and realize the same profit at the end of the day. Still, he maintains an electronics warehouse, selling under the name Fortuna at fortunaliquidations.com. He moves a lot of plasma televisions.
But old habits die hard, and the born entrepreneur was waiting for his next cue. On a trip back to Tunisia, where Shark is the number one energy drink, Boukadida thought: Why don't I bring this to the US? It took 8 months of research and negotiations, but he was determined. "I didn't even know the verbiage of the business, but I believed I could make it work because Shark is a superior product," he said.
"I also know that Buffalo is loyal to Buffalo business. Look at our partnership with a perfect example of one of those businesses—Mighty Taco. I want to be successful here and have a history of doing good things in Buffalo. I've been blessed with hard workers, and I want my name and my people associated with those good things," Boukadida said.
"Right now Shark is manufactured in Thailand, but if we establish this in the next two years, I may have a manufacturing plant in Buffalo. Shark is invested in Buffalo. There's great, inexpensive warehouse space here," Boukadida mused, "and the headquarters could be here. And that would make my…Life!"