Teamwork, innovation pay off for Mack Molding

Arlington, Vt. — When Mack Molding Co. won Plastics News' Processor of the Year award in 2006, it was a great comeback story.

Today Mack's story may be even better: a custom injection molder and contract manufacturer that's managed to keep growing and changing, and now it is poised for a new generation of leaders to take charge.

But let's not jump ahead to the last chapter quite yet. Let's start in the middle instead, because going back to the beginning would mean going back 104 years. And while the current management team members jokingly call themselves dinosaurs, none were at Mack when the company was founded in 1920.

So we'll start when Mack decided to try, for a second time, to be Processor of the Year. Current President Jeff Somple recalls that he was intimately involved with the 2006 application.

"We were a finalist a couple of years earlier, and of course we didn't win, so we didn't apply again for a year or two. And then a lot of good things happened in the business. It really turned the corner because we had a really rough patch in 2000, as a lot of people did," he said. "The economy wasn't doing great. The internet bubble burst. Our computers and business equipment just dried up, and that was three-quarters of our business. And then we had to reinvent ourselves.

"By 2006, we really had a nice trajectory going. And I thought it was a good story to tell about the resilience of an American manufacturing company — how we did certain things and made certain investments," Somple said.

Plus, the process of applying for the award had benefits of its own.

"I think the self-analysis and self-evaluation that was involved in the award was really helpful. You find out a lot about yourself," Somple added.

Mack ended up winning, and Somple said it was a great morale boost for the entire company.

"All of a sudden, it was like Mack is back. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful feeling," Somple said.

Jump ahead 15 years and Mack officials thought it was a good time to try for the PN Sustained Excellence award, which is available exclusively to previous Processor of the Year winners. The team at the Arlington-based company thought 2020 would be a good year to apply.

After all, that was the year the family-owned company would be celebrating its 100th birthday. Mack had a huge party scheduled for March 17.

But that plan didn't pan out. The COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, and the state of Vermont banned large gatherings just days ahead of the celebration. Mack, like the rest of the plastics supply chain, had to adjust quickly.

Perhaps the experience of reinventing the company in the early 2000s paid off. Mack stayed open and pumped up its manufacturing to record levels. It ended up having one of its best years ever, thanks to the key role it played in producing a wide variety of critically needed products.

"I'm sure a great book will be written about how business went during COVID. But like everyone else, at first, we didn't know how bad this was going to be. And then we thought it was going to be two or three weeks, like a real bad flu season," Somple said.

"So we really underestimated it at first. We just thought, 'Damn, COVID, you're interfering with our 100th anniversary celebration.'

"On the business side, almost immediately, our phone started ringing from customers saying: 'Just so you know, we're an essential business. We have to keep manufacturing, so you have to keep manufacturing,'" he said.

Mack supplied components used in ventilators, vaccine production, air purifiers and backup power supplies for hospitals and cell towers. The company followed protocols to keep everyone safe: Workers stayed 6 feet apart, plastic shields were installed, and everything was constantly being cleaned.

The first time someone got sick at work — it turned out it wasn't COVID — the company's response sent a message to everyone.

"It was a Thursday. Someone was throwing up in a wastebasket. We shut down the plant. We were closed on Friday, and for the whole weekend, we brought in one of those cleaning crews to sanitize everything," Somple said.

"I think that was actually very helpful because the employees saw that, 'OK, Mack is going to put our safety first — before business,'" Somple said.

Fortunately, as a fiscally conservative family-owned company, Mack was never in danger of going out of business. The company has no debt and didn't need government paycheck protection funds.

But this story isn't about surviving; it's about thriving. Somple gives credit to the Mack team and its customers for helping the company reach new heights during the pandemic.

"We developed some incredible new relationships with our suppliers, our customers and our employees because we had to ask every one of them for favors at various points in time," he said.

"Our customers were fantastic because they knew they were asking us to basically put ourselves in harm's way, and that's what I would tell the employees, too: 'I'm so proud of you guys. You get up, and you get in your car every morning, and you drive down the street. And you see neighbors sitting on the front porch waving to you. They're not going to work. And yet you're coming in here,'" he said. "We did a lot for our employees to say thank you."

One decision the company made early on was that even people with jobs that could be done remotely had to keep coming into the office. That included Joan Magrath, vice president of sales and engineering, who lives out of state but commuted to Arlington to work in the headquarters office every week.

"All the restaurants closed, all the inns closed, everything shut down. So I had to rent a cottage, and I packed up enough food every Sunday night, drove up here Monday morning, stayed the week and then went home," Magrath said.

"Joan probably could have a done a lot of her job remotely," Somple said. "But she said, 'It would look really bad if I'm not here, so I have to be, because I'm asking all of my people to show up.'"

In a January 2024 visit to the Mack headquarters, Somple, Magrath and Marc Colety, who retired as the company's vice president of procurement in late 2023, said workers noticed that the senior management was showing to the office up every day. "If those fossils up there can come to work…" Magrath joked.

Colety's job during the pandemic got very complicated.

"When I talked with our suppliers, I said, 'We're in this together.' We really felt like partners. We were doing things that we hadn't traditionally done, and they were supporting it. We were keeping their business afloat, and they were keeping our business operating," Colety said.

"Marc and his group did an incredible job managing the supply chain for resin to electronic components," Somple said. "We really didn't have to shut down customers, and that's helped make some of our relationships with customers even stronger. Because they knew that, 'OK, no matter what, Mack's going to be there, come hell or high water.'"

2020 also marked another milestone: Third-generation family owner and CEO Don Kendall III handed over the reins of parent company Mack Group to the fourth generation, Will Kendall. The family leadership at Mack is strong, and Somple peppers his stories with lessons he learned from Don Kendall.

"On the plus side of the ledger, at least from my perspective, Mack is a family-run company, and it is run that way and it feels that way. We honestly care about people, we care about our employees, we care about our customers, we care about the towns where we do business," Somple said.

"Most family-owned businesses, especially in manufacturing, don't last for generations. At this company, when Don Kendall took over in 1976, he was 26 years old. He had gone to college, he had served in the Navy, he had gone to business school, and he came in here to learn the business from his father. And he was here less than six months [when] his father died," Somple said.

"At the time Mack Molding, I think, was a $10 million company. It was a small, family-run manufacturing business, so all of the big explosive growth was under Don Kendall," Somple said.

Back in 2006, when it was named Processor of the Year, Mack had sales of $277 million and employed 1,850. Today, it has sales of about $600 million and more than 3,000 employees.

Sustained Excellence winners are judged on three criteria: financial excellence, one extraordinary new development since winning Processor of the Year, and one key person who has remained at the company and plays a key role.

For Mack, the "key person" is really three people. The award application highlighted the contributions of Somple, who has been with Mack for 35 years; Magrath, who has been with the company for 36 years; and Colety, who spent 27 years at Mack.

Under their leadership, Mack has launched a medical products group, established clean room molding and finishing operations, and acquired Synectic Product Development in 2013. Those moves effectively mean the company has reinvented itself again, becoming a vertically integrated manufacturer that can take customers' projects from concept to production.

But you might say the timing of the company's Sustained Excellence application in 2023 was cutting it close, considering the "key person" criteria. Somple and Magrath plan to join Colety in retirement by the end of 2024.

Given all those departures, succession planning has been critical. While the discussions have gotten serious lately, the process actually started decades ago when Mack started an innovative internship program. The program, which was the subject of a 2018 feature in the Wall Street Journal, has helped the company hire new talent, because many end up in full-time jobs after graduation.

"I call it a groundbreaking program. We average about 18 engineering interns every summer. And it's project-based. If you're a manager here, you have to apply to hire an intern and have a project written up for them. It's not making coffee and filing things; it's an actual project," Somple said.

"We do other things with the interns outside work, too; they become a cohort. They go out and play volleyball, and we offer them a golf membership for the summer, or a gym membership, so they can go out and do stuff together.

"Over the last 15 years, we've been really successful, converting 20-25 percent of them to full-time employees," he said. "They know Mack, and we get to know them. And if we make them a job offer, it's an intelligent one, and that's really driven down our average age. We've hired a lot of young engineers and technicians and purchasing people and HR — really all the departments — and that's worked out quite well."

Succession planning means all managers spend time preparing their staff to step up to the next level. Somple added that, in the search for his replacement, Mack is looking both internally and at external candidates.

"I'm pretty excited about it because we have a great foundation in place. We have great customers, we have great employees, we have a great financial situation, and we have great facilities and equipment," Somple said.

"I feel like I have great ideas, and I've done most of them, so I'm really excited about the right person coming in because this is the most amazing opportunity," he added. "You don't have to blow the ship up, because the ship's doing quite well. But boy, what a great journey to take it on. I think we left it in a good spot. I'm excited to see the next 20 years."