Kickstart: Who's a good boy?

Apparently there's a football game on Sunday. And at this year's Super Bowl, MacNeil Automotive Products Ltd.' WeatherTech brand will show up during one of the game's many high profile commercials.

But not really.

WeatherTech is only mentioned in passing. Instead the focus is on CEO David MacNeil's fluffy Golden Retriever, Scout, and on the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, which saved Scout's life when the 6-year-old developed a cancerous tumor.

MacNeil had been planning an ad focusing on WeatherTech's "Made in the U.S." credentials — similar to past Super Bowl ads — when Scout collapsed. Suddenly the focus changed.

"I think people have seen enough of that," MacNeil said, referring to WeatherTech's long history of promoting how its products are made in the U.S. and how it helps employ workers here. "So I thought, let's invest our energy to really do something to help animals, which also helps people."

In the late 1990s, when General Motors spun off its parts business into Delphi Corp., the business was an instant mega supplier. It made nearly everything that went into the car. Even its headquarters building seemed to dominate the suburban Detroit region, built so close to I-75 that it seemed to tower over the main business artery in Troy, Mich.

In 2007, Delphi had more than $1 billion in injection molding in North America alone, according to Plastics News data.

But first it spun off its interiors business as Inteva Products. And following a bankruptcy and restructuring during the Great Recession, it split itself into two pieces: Delphi Technologies and Aptiva.

Now Borg Warner is buying Delphi Technologies, a $3.8 billion supplier of electronics and propulsion.

Early in its life, Polyflex Products Inc. had two different companies it was having problems with. One of them didn't seem like it meshed well with the molders' value and structure. So although Polyflex needed the business, it decided to turn away from the one that didn't seem to fit.

It worked out, CEO Mark Kirchmer told Editor Don Loepp.

And it was an example that the company, a maker of dunnage equipment for big items like powertrains for automakers, could stick to its principles and make business work.

PolyFlex started in 2003 in a 17,000-square-foot building in Livonia, Mich. At that time, it employed 10 people and generated annual sales of less than $1 million. It now has 110 employees and annual sales of about $35 million.

The No. 1 priority? Employees.

"We will build a strong and viable company through growing our people personally and professionally," Kirchmer said.