Ampak story: Ingredients can be sourced anywhere. Knowing who makes them well, year after year, is what takes a lifetime to learn.

It began with an export business in India, and with a family who had spent their lives buying from manufacturers and processors across the country. Amarish, Ampak's founder, had come to America as a student and taken a master's in biochemistry. His wife, Mira, grew up watching her father build an export company from scratch.

The Ampak story itself took shape at Bear Mountain, above the Hudson, where the two of them dreamed up what they might build. It was going to be a hobby, honestly. They started it in New York in 1978 and named it after themselves. A for Amarish, M for Mira, PAK from their family name, Parikh.

Mira ran it for the first five years while Amarish kept his job at a pharmaceutical company and helped where he could. She built the foundation. In 1983 he came in full time and turned the hobby into a career. He knew the science before he ever learned the sales.

There was no internet then and no search. Reaching a supplier in India meant a telex. Finding a customer in America meant the Yellow Pages and a telephone.

"We didn't start from the top floor. We started from ground up. And slowly we grew. Every year we grew, regardless how the economy was."

The company existed because of something the industry needed then and largely takes for granted now.

"Everybody needed a US company to sell. You'd have to have somebody based in USA in order to import the material, distribute the material, because not everybody has that capability."

He built the next set of relationships himself. In the 1980s China was closed and its trade ran entirely through the state agency Sinochem, and few American importers made contact. Ampak did. When the country opened and those state traders left to start private companies, they needed a partner in the United States and already knew where to look. Several of those relationships are active four decades later.

The network kept widening from there. The people who joined Ampak brought relationships of their own and were free to build on them, and that is how the line grew. Sourcing in India expanded well past the original family connections. Indonesia became a significant origin. Today more than four hundred ingredients move from partners across India, China, and the Pacific Rim to manufacturers throughout the United States. As the founder puts it. "Whatever under the sky we can sell." 

The company's position on the people at the other end of it has not changed.

"I don't treat them like they are my supplier. I treat them like they are part of our company. An important backbone... You have to do the right thing by both ways."

The third generation is already at work. Amarish's son and daughter are active members of the team, buying from suppliers their father first called in 1983.

Amarish still oversees operations almost 50 years later, and wakes up every day excited about the work ahead.