Granger Plastics' super-strength shelter gets its close-ups

MIDDLETOWN, OHIO — Severe weather is a staple of hyperventilating local TV meteorologists. They know where to send the camera crews: Granger Plastics Co.

So does The Weather Channel. So does Netflix's new show, “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”

The reason: Granger makes rotationally molded storm shelters. Think Auntie Em and Uncle Henry yelling “Dorothy! Dorothy!” before finally slamming shut the shelter door in “The Wizard of Oz,” only plastic.

Granger's ISS Tornado Shelter is all-polyethylene, except for some mounting hardware and the pneumatic cylinders, like the ones on the hood of your car, which make the door easy to open. That door can withstand the Federal Emergency Management Agency missile impact test of a 15-pound 2x4 wooden board traveling at 100 mph.

The door is the most critical part of an underground storm shelter. Granger's rotomolded shelter door has a sheet of polycarbonate sandwiched between two linear low density polyethylene sides. (Granger also makes a bulletproof entry door for a house that is reinforced by a special woven-fabric composite material.)

The Granger shelter, which sells for $5,995, can seat six or more people. With excavation and installation, the total can run about $7,000. The double-walled, foam-filled shelter has a reverse taper design so it is self-anchoring. It comes with a lifetime warranty.

Granger rotomolds other products at its plant in Middletown. Air cargo shipping containers. Burial urns and cemetery vases. Parts for military contractors. A poker table. The company also does custom molding on its three rotomolding machines: A Ferry offset-arm machine with a 160-inch swing, a two independent-arm machines — a 120-inch McNeil and a 110-inch REI.

But the Granger ISS Tornado Shelter gets the headlines. Like the lengthy Weather Channel segment last year.

“They sought us out on that one. We had to scramble to make that happen,” President Jim Cravens said.

His son, Shawn Cravens, the general manager, tells the story: “They literally called on Thursday at like 5 or 6 o'clock. ‘Hey can you be here Saturday morning at 6 a.m.?'” The company drove a shelter down to Weather Channel headquarters in Atlanta. Shawn's wife, Alli Cravens, who handles marketing and sales, appeared on camera.

Then the producers of “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” called. They bought a shelter. It appears just a minute into the first episode, and gets screen time in opening credits for shows after that. The offbeat comedy is about a woman rescued after living 15 years in an apocalyptic cult. (Yes it is a comedy, co-written by Tina Fey.)

See some of the footage on this Plastics News Now report.

Jim and Shawn Cravens don't even blink when a Plastics News reporter asks if they mind climbing down into one of the three shelters buried behind the factory. “Again?” Jim jokes. “And of course every time a storm hits, the local channels are out here. The Cincinnati channels got to come do the story. Dayton channels have to come for a story.”

“HouseSmarts TV” has featured the plastic shelter. So has “Shipping Wars.”

Up against other materials

Granger's plastic shelter competes against shelters made out of other materials, including concrete, steel and fiberglass. The father-son team is well aware that a rotationally molded tornado shelter demonstrates the strength and durability of rotomolded products. The company touts the rotomolding process on its website, www.grangerplastics.com.

Granger Plastics is an example of the industry's tendency to have small companies that focus on a few key areas and succeed. Size does not matter so much in rotomolding. With estimated sales of $6.2 million, Granger placed No. 64 in Plastics News' most recent ranking, published in this issue.

The company builds its fabricated molds in-house, and sources cast and machined tools from suppliers. On some big complex parts, Granger technicians combine sections of all three types of molds into a single tool.

And they have fun in Middleton, at the plant in an industrial park not far from the city's sprawling steel mills. The Cravens got a custom-built trailer for shuttling a shelter to trade shows and home shows. It looks like a ride at the county fair, with metal steps talking people up to the top, so they can try out the shelter. At shows, sometimes they dress Shawn and Alli's young daughter like Dorothy. They dress up a dummy like the Wicked Witch.

Shawn Craven has set up about 150 websites, covering words like storm shelters and funeral products — full of videos, and all linking back to Granger Plastics products. People searching for a shelter aren't going to type “rotomolding” into their computer, he said. The company sells shelters through a variety of dealers, including manufactured housing firms and septic tank outfits.

Jim Cravens said his son “convinced me that it's all about the Internet.”

Shawn originally wanted to be a doctor. He got a degree in biology from the University of Louisville, and got accepted to its medical school. Then he decided against being a doctor and got into banking, where he was working in college. He joined the rotomolder in 2004, spending about a year running machines and trimming parts.

His father has his own background story. Jim Cravens, a mechanical engineer, gained experience in metal fabrication working at a manufacturer of commercial lawn mowers. The knowhow is useful for making rotational molds, he said.

Later, he worked at Meese Inc.'s rotomolding factory in Madison, Ind., where he met John Grimes, whose father John Grimes Sr., was a rotomolding pioneer. Grimes left to start Granger Plastics in 1994. Cravens stayed at Meese, but then joined Granger in 1998 as vice president of sales and engineering.

Grimes retired in 2002 and Cravens bought the company.

Bringing them to market

Jim Cravens said the company began molding storm shelters in 2001, then custom-molded them for another company for about five years.

“After we parted ways with them, I started working on a refinement of the design,” he said. “And it took us another two years to bring it to market.”

Granger redesigned the shelter yet again, especially focusing on the door. “With the shelter, it's all about the door. We have the only plastic door that will pass that FEMA test,” he said.

Cravens said that, over the years, Granger Plastics has molded thousands of tornado shelters. “It truly varies,” he said. “This year's been an off-year, we don't know why. Last year, we couldn't keep up. I mean, we literally from January until December were constantly trying to get shelters out the door.”

Sales spike when severe weather hits.

“Yes. Absolutely. How many people are killed? And how much coverage it gets,” Cravens said. That's the harsh reality of the storm shelter business.

The company got into the funeral products business three years ago, designing the watertight containers to hold cremated remains, and flower vases. Cravens said granite urns can cost $500 or $600. The rotomolded ones are attractive, for a fraction of the cost. Granger sells them under the ForeverSafe brand.

Cravens said Granger has been in the air cargo container business since it started. The company ramped up with a major investment of $250,000 to serve the huge hub of DHL Express in Wilmington, Ohio, about 50 miles east of Middletown.

He will always remember Nov. 10, 2008. Granger officials were at DHL doing physical testing of its containers. That same day, DHL announced it was closing its Wilmington hub — devastating news for the small town. “9,500 people lost their jobs that day,” Cravens said.

He soldiered on. “We said, ‘fine we'll do this ourselves,'” Cravens said. “And if I'd of known then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have done it. But we took a quarter of a million dollar investment and turned it into about a $700,000 investment, paid our FAA certification, to get our quality program up to their standards and to build tooling for all of that.”

Jim Cravens echoed other industry leaders in the importance of people running the rotomolding machines, which can be hot, physically demanding work. They have to aware of temperature changes caused by the weather, which impacts molded parts.

“When you're running tight-tolerance parts, everyone on the floor's involved — just totally aware. Everyone involved has got to be on their toes,” he said. “We'll measure those parts sometimes up to 12 times.”

Cravens also thinks the rotomolding industry needs to educate consumers on the limitations of the process, both in part design. And the lack of rotomolding materials — a constant refrain from molders.

“But I'm one of the only guys in the industry that's willing to pay the money for the material. You know, everybody wants to buy that material for 50 cents a pound or some ridiculous amount. We're out here, we're molding materials that are $8 and $9 a pound, only because, we've educated our customers that this is what it's going to take and this will be the result,” he said. “So then you get someone who understands the whole picture.”

These are special applications, and Cravens doesn't want to get into details. He acknowledged that consumer products have a tougher time adopting new materials.

Cravens is jokingly asked if his shelters can withstand nuclear war. He gives a hearty laugh. “Naah. I'm not gonna test it to find out!”