Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Plastics News China
  • Rubber & Plastics News
logo-pn-color
Subscribe
  • Login
  • Register
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • End Markets
    • FYI Charts
    • LSR World
    • Multimedia
    • NPE2021
    • K Show
    • Special Reports
    • Top materials of injection molders
      Recycled PET use by product category
      US PET, flexible packaging desintations
      Global fluropolymers additives market: CAGR
    • NPE exhibitors question handling of deposits for canceled trade show
      Exhibitors back NPE cancellation: ‘We couldn't take that risk'
      NPE2021 canceled as in-person event
      NPE reviews its options as pandemic prompts exhibitor to exit
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • What Keeps You Up At Night
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Videos
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • CEO Issue
    • Best Places to Work
    • Processor of the Year
    • Rising Stars
    • Women Breaking the Mold
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • Heavy Metal
    • One Good Resin
    • BRICS and Plastics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • From Pillar to Post
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Perspective: Making the best of working from home
      Nypro's Gordon Lankton left the plastics industry a better place
      Recognizing Plastek Industries for all-around excellence
      Let's look forward, rather than back, to mark COVID anniversary
    • Kickstart: A different kind of auto plastics in Spring Hill
      Kickstart: They're not used shoes, they're 'refurbished'
      Kickstart: Holy guacamole, science is cool
      Kickstart: Coffee with a splash of sustainability
    • Heavy Metal: Coronavirus edition, plus the work of working from home
      Don't put off succession planning
      What's a good gift for your cobot? Batteries?
      Here's some big ideas to mull over the holidays
    • University of Kentucky to honor Braskem's Krishnaswamy
      PE resin trends highlighted in Shell report
      Dow's Lowry honored by World Economic Forum for sustainability work
      Africa impacts new colors from Ampacet
    • Kickstart: My Earth Day force majeure — writing about reusables
      Climate debate in Washington increasingly includes plastic
      There was no choice but canceling NPE still a big deal
      The business case for producer responsibility
    • Annual PN LSR directory grows
      Want prices? Introducing historical resin pricing, now available in a downloadable form
      A new annual ranking: Top processor gains
      Thermoformers: Would you believe a 12 percent gain?
    • Working from home: Rugrats edition
      Nypro's Gordon Lankton left the plastics industry a better place
      Let's look forward, rather than back, to mark COVID anniversary
      Virtual pitfalls derail exhibits for builders' trade show
    • Auxiliary equipment makers line up future work while noting: ‘Robots didn't get the virus'
      Machine builders press through pandemic with innovations
      PEX pipe maker Uponor donates $30,000 for Texas storm relief
      Virtual pitfalls derail exhibits for builders' trade show
    • Perspective: Making the best of working from home
      Perspective: The Materials Wars: Is plastic actually better?
      Perspective: Plastics manufacturers — a surprising contribution to sustainability
      Plastics industry business owners: Listen to your future workforce
    • Mailbag: Additional fees for electric vehicles ‘unfortunate'
      Mailbag: Where's the plastics industry's response to critics?
      Mailbag: Manufacturers struggling to follow COVID-19 safety rules
      Modernizing recycling infrastructure will benefit businesses as well as the environment
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
    • Maintenance can ensure efficient blender operation
      Dosing: Perfect for adding color
      Blending vs dosing: What you need to know
      Going low or high: Comparing volume
    • Colors and custom compounds
      In the laboratory: Compounding solutions
      Recycling content: Resins going ‘green’
      Compounding: Glass and other fillers
    • Dryer maintenance: Don’t err with air
      Dryers: Options for a shop’s process
      Dryer installation: Going central?
      Resins: Hygroscopic or non-hygroscopic
    • Electric injection molding presses: Efficiency is key
      Hydraulic injection molding machines
      Proper maintenance can prevent downtime
      Hybrid injection molding machines
    • Purging Hot runners: Open or closed methods
      Purging extrusion machinery
      Purging extrusion blow molding machines
      Purging: Chemical, abrasive and non-abrasive
    • Controls, special applications boost production, profitability
      Robot maintenance key for smooth operation
      High-speed robots: A rapid way to increase efficiency
      Robots: Every shape and size
    • Maintenance: Key for efficiency
      Shredders: Plastic in pieces
      Safety first for size reduction
      Granulators: The right fit
    • Structural foam molding: Flexibility for processors
      Video: Structural foam molding
    • Mold inventory: How many molds does a shop have?
      Molds: Innovation
      Mold changeover: Saving time and money
      How molds work
    • Labor: Apprenticeships may provide answer
      Internships: Solving the skills gap in-house
      College training, programs
      Lean Six Sigma: Transforming business operation
  • Events
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Ask the Expert
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Reifenhäuser Technologies Livestreams
    • 2020 Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Polymer Points Live - May 2021
      Polymer Points Live - April 2021
      Polymer Points Live - February 2021
      Polymer Points Live - January 2021
    • Plastics in Healthcare 2020
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Plastics in Automotive
    • Plastics News Caps & Closures
    • Plastics in Healthcare
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
  • Resin Prices
    • All Resins
    • Commodity TPs
    • High Temp TPs
    • ETPs
    • Thermosets
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
    • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
    • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Historic Thermosets
    • Historic Recycled Plastics
  • Rankings
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Data Store
  • Directory
  • More+
    • Classifieds
    • Digital Edition
    • Newsletters
    • Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Processor of the Year submissions
    • Sponsored By Chase Plastics
      Styrenic Thermoplastics: 4 Polymers and Benefits of Each
      Sponsored By Bandera
      Bandera US was born for the North American market
      Sponsored By Ensign Equipment
      Filling systems customized for any process or budget need
      KraussMaffei
      Sponsored By KraussMaffei
      KraussMaffei retools in US with investment from parent ownership
    • KraussMaffei
      Sponsored By KraussMaffei
      KraussMaffei Retools in US with investment from Parent Ownership
    • Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Tailored maintenance for injection molding machines and robots
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Improve maintenance efficiency with e-connect.monitor
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Maximum precision for lowest shot weights
      Sponsored By ENGEL Machinery
      Even more cost effectiveness for small precision parts
    • Shell Polymer
      Sponsored By Shell Polymers
      Food and beverage trends impacting the polymer industry
      Sponsored By Conexiom
      Use Sales Order Automation to free up time for CSRs to focus on customers, not manual entry
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
May 18, 2016 02:00 AM

Mack pushes long-term happy customers over short-term profits

Michael Lauzon
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Print
    Mack Molding Co.
    Mack Molding in 1942.

    Not many companies in the plastics industry can boast their business has been in the family for 96 years.

    Mack Molding Co. can.

    Donald S. Kendall co-founded Mack Molding Co. in 1920 after he spent time as a chemist for the Thomas Edison Cos. Mack started with three rebuilt injection presses and experimented with urea-formaldehyde and phenol-formaldehyde resins in its Little Falls, N.J., facility. The company expanded and mostly made bottle caps until World War II, when it switched to mortar-shell casings and other goods for the war effort. After the war it began molding automotive and appliance components.

    The Kendall family bought out partners in the Mack business in 1960. Early jobs included Timex watch boxes and Schick razor handles.

    In 1974 Donald S. Kendall III, the founder's grandson, took over the reigns of the firm. Kendall III, now the company's CEO and chairman, started with a $4 million business and grew it to its current size of about $350 million a year. It grew internally and through acquisition. Its latest acquisition was Synectic Engineering Inc., a custom engineering services company based in Milford, Conn., that it bought in summer 2013.

    Mack Group is now based in Arlington, Vt., and runs 11 manufacturing plants in the United States and Mexico. Mack Molding is the major plastics business among the firm's four divisions. Mack Molding operates six plants in the United States producing molded plastic components and assemblies for diverse industries ranging from medical to electronics to consumer markets. It also makes metal parts and offers design, prototyping and other secondary services. Mack Molding employs about 1,200.

    Other divisions are Synectic, Mack Prototype of Gardner, Mass., which also does low-volume plastics molding, and Mack Technologies, a provider of turnkey system assembly services for high-end electronics.

    Kendall states his family has made it a priority to keep Mack in the family.

    “We would like to keep Mack in the Kendall family for as many generations as we can,” Kendall stated in an email correspondence. “We prefer not to have outside investors whose goals may not align with ours.”

    Family businesses can create a legacy and with it a sense of accomplishment that can be a strong motivator for following generations to carry on the tradition. The owners teach and pass along their values in business and life to the next generation.

    One of Kendall's two children, Will, is interested in the business and plans to continue with Mack. His other son, Scott, has his own business outside Mack but is still an active board member. Both own significant blocks of Mack stock and could decide together how the company would be passed on to their children. Only Kendall family members own Mack stock with Kendall and his two sons owning more than 95 percent of the firm.

    In every Kendall generation there has been someone with the talent and desire to lead the company. Kendall assumed leadership at the age of 27 after his father died. Each generation benefited from the latent knowledge of the business amassed by the former generation. The fourth generation is actively involved in Mack. Nancy and Scott Kendall are board members. Will Kendall is on the board as well as president of Mack Technologies Inc., a business specializing in turnkey systems for high-end electronics.

    From as early as high school family members are exposed to the innermost workings at Mack. They work in departments as diverse as maintenance to sales to prepare them for leadership positions.

    The family feeling spreads throughout the company and Mack has employees whose families have also spanned the generations. Key employees can be treated like extended family and develop bonds that go beyond the typical employer-employee dynamic.

    “We have parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives, working together,” said Kendall. “It is the nature of operating a family-owned business in small-town America.”

    A family has more freedom in how company employees are treated and the family can make decisions that would go counter to the instincts of third-party investors and management.

    “We are more interested in long-term happy customers than short-term profits, something that would not be acceptable to most outside investors,” Kendall said.

    “Probably the decision to take all of our employees to Disney World for four days for the 75th anniversary would not have been made by a third party. Also 50 percent of our bonuses are based on how happy our customers are. Third parties would probably place more emphasis on profits.”

    This long-term approach can be called “patient capital.” And the family itself also can be a source of “hard capital” to finance business strategies. This backstopping of the business by the family can give the company a competitive advantage when the economy is sluggish and financing through conventional channels is hard to get. Mack has no long-term debt.

    Mack is a big employer in a small town in a sparsely populated state. About 600 work at Mack's three facilities including its headquarters in Vermont. Arlington has about 2,300 residents and the whole state about 626,000.

    The Kendalls are well aware of how important Mack is to the communities, not only for employment and taxes, but also for community involvement and environmental stewardship. Long ago the company ran a bowling alley in Arlington where employees could relax after work. Now it is locally famous for holiday parties, picnics, free fitness classes and an outdoor recreation area.

    Mack has weathered tough times. It got into computer housings when that was a nascent market and then diversified when that market became crowded and the dot-com boom went bust. Now it also counts medical, industrial, transportation, energy and consumer products as its major markets. Over the years it added prototyping, large-part molding, painting, design and high-end electronics assembly to its custom injection molding forte. It brought fresh blood into the business to balance management strengths and currently the important positions of president of Mack Molding and CFO of Mack Group are held by non-family members, Jeff Somple and Florence Belnap, respectively.

    Mack expects to see single-digit annual growth in the near term. Some outsiders might strive for faster returns but the Kendalls have found a formula for success.

    “We have no interest in selling the company,” Kendall emphasized. ”What we are doing is very fulfilling.”

    Read an overview of family-owned businesses and find links to other profiles.

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you'd like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at [email protected]

    Get our newsletters

    Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge.

    Subscribe today

    Subscribe to Plastics News

    Subscribe now
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.

    logo-pn-color
    Contact Us

    1155 Gratiot Avenue
    Detroit MI 48207-2997

    Customer Service:
    877-320-1723

    Resources
    • About
    • Staff
    • Editorial Calendar
    • Media Kit
    • Data Store
    • Digital Edition
    • Custom Content
    • People
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Sitemap
    Related Crain Publications
    • Sustainable Plastics
    • Rubber & Plastics News
    • Urethanes Technology
    • Plastics News China
    • European Rubber Journal
    • Tire Business
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2021. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Processor News
        • Injection Molding
        • Blow Molding
        • Film & Sheet
        • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
        • Rotomolding
        • Thermoforming
        • Recycling
      • Suppliers
        • Machinery
        • Materials
        • Molds/Tooling
        • Product news
        • Design
      • More News
        • What Keeps You Up At Night
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
        • Polymer Points Live
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • FYI Charts
        • Current FYI
      • LSR World
      • Multimedia
        • Videos
        • Galleries
        • Podcasts
      • NPE2021
      • K Show
      • Special Reports
        • CEO Issue
        • Best Places to Work
        • Processor of the Year
        • Rising Stars
        • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • Heavy Metal
      • One Good Resin
      • BRICS and Plastics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • From Pillar to Post
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Plastics in Automotive
        • Plastics News Caps & Closures
        • Plastics in Healthcare
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
      • Industry Events
      • Livestreams/Webinars
      • Ask the Expert
      • Polymer Points Live
      • Reifenhäuser Technologies Livestreams
      • 2020 Caps & Closures Library
      • Plastics in Healthcare Library
      • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Resin Prices
      • All Resins
      • Commodity TPs
        • Historic Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temp TPs
        • Historic High Temp Thermoplastics
      • ETPs
        • Historic Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Thermosets
        • Historic Thermosets
      • Recycled Plastics
        • Historic Recycled Plastics
    • Rankings
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Data Store
    • Directory
    • More+
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified
      • Digital Edition
      • Newsletters
      • Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Processor of the Year submissions