Custom molder Rodon Group sees window of opportunity with new product line

Rodon Group LLC, a custom injection molder out of Hatfield, Pa., is setting its sights on a new product line that it says could have a significant impact on sales and profitability for the company in the years to come.

The product, called SillDry, is a patented one-piece sill pan flashing that is designed to protect vulnerable areas of windows and doors from water intrusion. The expandable, waterproof design has a raised back dam with a built-in slope and features an accordion-style expansion capability.

The part is made of thermoplastic polyolefin and can be molded in a cycle time of 30-60 seconds depending on the size, which can range from "18 inches to infinity," according to co-inventor Joel Glickman. The largest size so far has been 12 feet, he said.

"And it solves a problem where there are builders out there who have gone out of business because they're being sued for what the SillDry pan protects against, which is the windows leaking," Glickman said in a phone interview.

"The house settles, and the windows crack in the corners. They can't help it, so water gets in, seeps down under the window and rots out the sill underneath it," he said. "The SillDry sill pan takes the water that could conceivably seep through there and disperses it into and out of the building."

Glickman is chairman and CEO of Rodon Group and the inventor of K'Nex construction toys. He's also now principal at Sill Dry Industries LLC alongside Kieran McMahon, a construction industry veteran who originally presented the window-leaking problem to Glickman.

"People come to us with problems — they require something — and we help them solve them," Glickman said. "They need a product, and we help them design something that's both manufacturable and what they need for whatever they're building."

Glickman invented K'Nex in 1991. The company, founded in 1992, makes the widely known construction sets based on interconnecting plastic girders and supports that can be assembled into various structures.

K'Nex Brands' assets were sold to Basic Fun, a toy and novelty company in Boca Raton, Fla., in a January 2018 auction, but Rodon still molds the components, Glickman said.

"I made a decision that we couldn't finance both businesses appropriately," he said of K'Nex and Sill Dry.

Glickman said he had been contemplating expanding into SillDry and, ultimately, determined it had more potential. "You're talking significant dollars," he said.

"K'Nex is and continues to be a wonderful product. It's now been almost 30 years that it's been in existence, and I imagine it'll outlast me," he added. "But SillDry represents a much, much larger opportunity financially."

SillDry became commercially available a few months ago after more than three years in the design phase, Glickman said, but it has already led to big investments by Rodon as the company puts a strategy in place for future — and larger — growth.

Most recently, the company invested around $750,000 in a 720-ton Nissei injection molding machine that is being used to mold the large SillDry parts. The Nissei press is equipped with a high-speed, full-servo robot from Star Automation Inc.

The machine is Rodon's largest-tonnage press to date and joins 118 other injection molding machines housed at the company's 125,000-square-foot headquarters and manufacturing facility. Clamping forces now range from 46-720 tons.

The company has also purchased another 125,000-square-foot building about a mile from its headquarters. The building — a mirror image of the current facility — is valued at about $9 million, Glickman said, and has 11 loading docks. It'll be up and running within the next week or two, and will employ about 10 people.

"What we'll do is use the second building for our warehouse and shipping, and use the space that we've cleared out — the warehouse in the original building — to add additional presses," Glickman said. "That's our plan."

All of the molding will still be done at its headquarters until it runs out of room. When that happens, he estimated the second facility could house between 35-50 injection molding machines.

And with SillDry, the company is expecting "big things," Glickman said.

"I think it will be significant in that there are 60 million windows and doors made in the United States," he said. "Rather than selling something for a nickel, the sill pans that we're selling, the ballpark range is somewhere between $8 and $10 a running foot."

A typical 3-foot unit could be in the mid-$20 range for a part, he estimated.

"Multiply that by 60 million, you see what the potential of the company is," he said.

Rodon Group is No. 160 on Plastics News' most recent ranking of injection molders in North America, with estimated injection molding sales of $40 million in 2018.