Robert Schiavone joined R&D Tool & Engineering in Lee's Summit, Mo., in 2008, and set about to modify the company's name, branding and identity to help it compete better in a cutthroat marketplace. R&D (www.rdleverage.com), which also has offices in the United Kingdom, is a leading supplier of injection and blow-molding tooling for the food, beverage, home, personal care and healthcare industries. Schiavone is responsible for strategic planning and industry marketing, company branding, and other marketing and communications initiatives.
He came to R&D from his post as marketing manager for Rexam Personal Care, a leading supplier of plastic packaging for personal care and household products. Prior to that, Schiavone was marketing and communications manager for Precise Technology Inc., a Pennsylvania-based packaging injection molder that Rexam purchased in 2008. At Precise, he directed all international planning, budgeting and reporting of marketing efforts during the company's growth from sales of $21 million to more than $300 million.
Since his arrival at the Kansas City-area firm, R&D has dropped “Tool & Engineering” from its name and adopted the tag line “Integrated Solutions in Plastics.” Additionally, it has launched an industrial design unit called Leverage, which uses the tagline of “Integrated Industrial Design.” The group now offers a full range of services, from ideation and design, through to tooling and manufacturing.
Leverage is R&D's consumer packaging component, located in a separate facility on the R&D campus. Leverage's four-pronged range of services includes upfront research (retail audits, trend and color study, ethnographic research, consumer brainstorming); concept development (story boards, feasibility studies, digital prototyping, graphic design and branding); validation (online design, model making) and implementation (prototype molds, mold sampling and low-volume production).
Prior to working for Precise Technology, Schiavone was a marketing/design communications specialist for auxiliary equipment maker Conair Corp., served as marketing director for pharmaceutical industry machine supplier Elizabeth-Hata International, and was a medical marketing manager for the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Pharmacology.
A native of Pennsylvania, he earned an associates degree in marketing communications from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.