Molding Business Services buys Gros Executive Recruiters

Gros Executive Recruiters, the company that's made the pith helmet a familiar symbol of plastics recruiting and executive search, has a new owner.

The buyer is Molding Business Services of Florence, Mass., a company that specializes in mergers and acquisitions, recruiting and executive search services for the plastics industry.

Dennis Gros, who founded Gros Executive Recruiters in 1989, will stay with MBS and has been appointed president of the combined recruiting business.

MBS President Jonathan Soucy said the deal will help his firm diversify into other parts of the plastics sector. MBS was founded in 1998 and its recruiting has focused almost exclusively on injection molders.

“Gros Executive Recruiters has a customer base that's more broad, with packaging, extrusion, machinery and other sectors,” Soucy said in a Jan. 5 telephone interview. “Combined, we'll have a big database, a bigger network.”

M&A remains important for MBS. Soucy said the firm has just finished its best year ever in that market. But with processors scrambling for trained workers, he said the recruiting and search business is “more important than ever” for MBS clients.

Gros agreed.

“Manufacturing is growing, it's going up. So which way do you see demand for people going? It's going up. It's going up for people who know their stuff, who are competent, trained, engaged professionals,” Gros said in a phone interview. “There will continue to be greater demand for these people than there is a supply.”

Together, MBS and Gros have recruiting staff across the United States: in Massachusetts, Illinois, Tennessee, Vermont and California.

Gros said the deal combines the No. 1 and No. 2 firms in the plastics recruiting business. He joked: “We just can't agree on who was No. 1 and who was No. 2. ... We look to have some fun together.”

Gros Executive Recruiters will become the sole recruiting brand of the combined entity and will operate as a Molding Business Services company.

Gros said the company will continue to use its trademark pith helmet logo, which he started using as a way to emphasize to clients that his firm can guide them through the jungle of executive search.

“As it turned out, the pith helmet logo probably became better known than the name of my company,” he said.

Both companies had planned to exhibit separately at NPE2018, scheduled for May in Orlando, Fla. Gros said the firms are now scrambling with plans to emphasize the new relationship at the show.