James Iacino is president and CEO of Seattle Fish Co., a seafood distributorship that services more than 1,400 customers from its base in Denver. Iacino is the grandson of the company’s founder, Moses Iacino, and is responsible for the strategy and culture of the business.
SeafoodSource: Seattle Fish has been in an expansion mode, with bigger processing operations in Kansas and additional distribution into Utah: Talk a little bit about these moves and how they fit in with your overall business strategy for the company.
Iacino: As our business continues to grow and our nearly 100-year-old brand reaches new markets, we continue to experience an increased demand for seafood distribution. While we try to manage our growth to always ensure that quality and service to our customers is not compromised, these particular expansions have fit nicely within our core competency of fresh seafood distribution and we have taken advantage of those opportunities.
We are expecting the overall demand for seafood to continue to grow in the long-term and we look to provide the resources necessary in the markets we service to best allow us to fulfill that demand. While organic growth is our primary goal, some regional expansion has provided new opportunities to bring seafood to new markets.
SeafoodSource: What do you consider to be your biggest business challenge thus far, and what did you learn from that experience?
Iacino: Our biggest challenge thus far has been managing our growth. High quality and excellent service are founding values of our company, and growing too fast has the potential to compromise these values. We have learned to better plan for growth and to limit our projects and opportunities to those that we feel provide the best return on investment while allowing us to continue to maintain the highest levels of quality and service possible. Continuous improvement in our processes has allowed us to capitalize on growth initiatives while also improving our operational standards.
SeafoodSource: Looking at the seafood distribution business, what are the top one or two issues facing this sector of the industry and what are some of the solutions you would offer to address those issues?
Iacino: I strongly feel that increasing overall demand for seafood throughout the United States is one of the top issues that the industry needs to address. With Americans consuming 15 pounds per capita of seafood annually, we have plenty of room for growth in overall demand.
I believe the industry has a responsibility to better communicate the health benefits, sustainable practices and incredible variety of high-quality products we have to offer consumers. We need to work together to drive increased acceptance and consumption among consumers and to tell the incredibly positive story behind our protein.
In addition to increasing demand comes the issue of sustainably managing our supply. This should continue to be a global focus through the coordinated efforts to work with third-party certification bodies, NGOs, governments and industry to properly manage our wild resource while promoting the sustainable aquaculture industry to meet the future demand needs for seafood.
SeafoodSource: If there were one thing you could change about the seafood industry as a whole, especially as it relates to your ability to run a successful business, what would it be?
Iacino: If I could change one thing about the industry, it would be the stigma associated with seafood that has largely been mythologized over the past few decades. The large variety of myths associated with seafood has confused the consumer and hindered our ability as an industry to significantly grow demand for our products. A unified messaging campaign to consumers to bring factual information to the market would allow us to start from a better overall position when compared with other proteins.
SeafoodSource: Among your peers in the industry, who do you turn to for advice, to share ideas, to joke around, or to just talk to about issues you have in common?
Iacino: The seafood industry feels like a giant family to me, often because many of my colleagues are also involved in family businesses with quite a bit of history. I find it very easy to meet with producers, importers and fellow distributors at seafood conferences and to talk openly about the issues we face and brainstorm about solutions we can get behind.
At the end of the day, we are all incredibly passionate about our industry and can unify around our ability to sustainably feed people and ensure the health of our communities and planet as a whole.
SeafoodSource: Given the opportunity to address a room filled with seafood industry leaders such as yourself, what is the one nugget of wisdom you would offer them as your closing remark?
Iacino: We are incredibly fortunate to work with one of the best products in the world and we must not forget to take pride in telling the story of that product. Take care to treat seafood with the highest regard for quality and it will not disappoint. If we can do these things, the future is incredibly bright for our industry.
