Mar-Bal marks 50 years of steady growth from its Ohio base

It's been 50 years since Jim Balogh used an old Volkswagen to drag a compression press into a manufacturing space in Cleveland, and Mar-Bal Inc., the thermosets firm that he co-founded, is still going strong.

"We've got a lot to be thankful for," Jim's son Scott Balogh, the firm's president and CEO, said in a Sept. 18 interview with Plastics News. "We've got great customers and great people. When you've got that, it doesn't feel like work."

Mar-Bal, a thermosets molder and compounder, now is based in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The firm operates manufacturing plants in Ohio, Virginia and Missouri, as well as a plant and sales office in China. Mar-Bal serves the appliance, electrical, industrial, foodservice, transportation and construction industries, employing 450 and posting annual sales of about $70 million.

The firm has another family connection in Jim Balogh's son Steven, who serves as Mar-Bal's executive vice president. In a recent statement to Plastics News, Jim Balogh said that 50 years ago, "I came to Ohio after serving five years in the U.S. Army, worked hard and dreamed big."

"I am so grateful for living in a country that has given me the opportunity to realize the Great American Dream," he added. "I am fortunate to have two sons who also work hard and achieve much."

Jim Balogh was a tooling engineer for Glastic Corp. when he founded Mar-Bal in Cleveland along with Frank Martinek, a paint chemist with Sherwin-Williams. The initial investment in Mar-Bal was $10,000. The firm's name is a combination of the founders' last names.

Scott Balogh said that his father "thought he could do business on the small orders that [Glastic] threw away." The two founders "were good materials and process innovators — two things that are hard to balance," he added.

Mar-Bal's first location was in the Flats, an industrial neighborhood in Cleveland. That's where the Volkswagen came in.

"A guy I knew called me and said, 'I've got a press for you — it's ugly as hell, but it works,'" Jim Balogh said at an industry conference in 2016. When the press was delivered, it was left outside the building. Balogh had to hook it up to the car, sending sparks flying and digging grooves into the concrete.

Jim Balogh had come a long way just to get to the point of starting a company. He was jailed as a teenager in his native Hungary after taking part in that country's revolution in 1956.

Balogh later escaped and enlisted in the U.S. Army — before ever setting foot on U.S. soil. He went to college on the GI Bill and became a tool designer. In 2016, Balogh said "I owe all I have to this country" and that many immigrants become businessmen because "they can take risks because they have nothing to lose."

Today, Mar-Bal continues to work with advanced materials, developing new products via its portfolio of brands and proprietary products. From its earliest days, the firm had a philosophy of outstanding customer service no matter the size of the company, company officials said in a news release.

Jim Balogh's tooling and manufacturing expertise helped the firm build a strong regional reputation as a thermoset composite molder, which led to an expansion to a larger location in the Flats. Early Cleveland-based customers for Mar-Bal included Erico Products, Service Machine and Lincoln Electric, as well as McGraw-Edison of Zanesville.

At that point, Mar-Bal focused on the electrical equipment industry, using composites in many different applications. During this period, Jim Balogh designed and built the firm's UL-Listed Standoff Insulators product line, which Mar-Bal still sells today.

Jim Balogh bought Martinek's share of Mar-Bal in the late 1970s. In 1981, the firm sold its pultrusion business in order to expand in injection molding and to develop a line of thermoset polyester bulk molding compounds, now called composites. Officials said that materials engineer and formulator Art Busler was instrumental in Mar-Bal entering the materials compounding and fiberglass laminates business in that era.

In 1982, Mar-Bal moved its operations to Chagrin Falls, about 25 miles east of Cleveland. In the late 1980s, the firm expanded the use of its own thermoset polyesters into the appliance industry. Mar-Bal developed a line of "cold-touch" countertop appliances in colors not available in other high-temperature plastics.

Success in the appliance industry allowed Mar-Bal to open a plant in Cuba, Mo., in 1988, to supply molded parts to customers in that region, including Toastmaster and Emerson Electric. That same year, Mar-Bal began designing and manufacturing oven and range door components for Whirlpool.

Scott Balogh joined Mar-Bal in 1992 as sales manager. He was joined in 1993 by his brother Steven as the firm's compounding production and purchasing manager. Both Scott and Steven Balogh had worked at the company as teenagers, but they followed their father's instruction to work elsewhere before coming back to Mar-Bal if they wanted.

"When we were growing up, Dad said if you were old enough to hold a file, you were old enough to work, so he had us at the plant," Steven Balogh said at a company event in 2018.

Under Scott Balogh, Mar-Bal gained sales with Whirlpool, Maytag, VitaMix and Hoover, as well as growing sales with GE Locomotive, one of the firm's earliest customers that remains a customer today. Mar-Bal's annual sales grew from $12 million in 1992 to $21 million by 1997. Scott Balogh was promoted to vice president and operations manager in mid-1997.

In his role, Steven Balogh helped Mar-Bal to consolidate suppliers and align the firm with companies that improved the quality and performance of its products. In 1995, Steven Balogh and Mar-Bal's materials engineering team worked with PPG to develop a process to apply powder coatings to materials for Whirlpool's new oven and range product lines.

Also in that era, Mar-Bal material engineer George Lin developed a line of paintable composites for those products that officials said still hasn't been replicated in the industry to date.

Mar-Bal opened its third plant in Dublin, Va., in 1995 to expand and invest in growth from electrical customers in the Southeastern U.S. From 2000 to 2005, the firm's sales increased from $26 million to $37 million, with strong growth in major appliances and continued growth in the electrical market in both compression and injection molding.

In 2006, Mar-Bal opened its Corporate Research & Development Center building in Chagrin Falls. Officials said the new facility offered a platform where innovators in materials, product design and process engineering could take a concept to production in record time.

Mar-Bal's Advanced Manufacturing Group consolidated operations at the new site. Officials said this team is dedicated to developing and building new innovative equipment and automation, which provides the firm with a long-term cost and quality advantage.

Mar-Bal made a full-circle move in 2012, when it bought a line of standoff insulators that had been made by Glastic — the firm that Jim Balogh had worked for before opening Mar-Bal. The firm's Chinese plant opened in 2016 to serve its growing number of international customers.

In 2018, Mar-Bal acquired and renovated a 110,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Painesville, Ohio. Scott Balogh said in a news release that the Painesville plant positions the firm for future growth in its core manufacturing processes and is "an important addition" to its global manufacturing footprint.

Also in 2018, Mar-Bal entered the construction and safety industry by acquiring the assets of AlertTile and Detectable Warning Systems, two firms that made ADA-compliant tactile warning surfaces for visually impaired pedestrians.

Mar-Bal management has worked with an advisory board since 2001. The board is made up of five key advisors outside of the company — and outside of the Balogh family — that focuses on expansion growth strategies.

Scott Balogh said that the board "is an experienced, well-balanced mix of talented people with Wall Street and Main Street backgrounds."

"We meet quarterly, and they challenge us on key growth strategies in five tiered areas: manufacturing footprint, new and existing markets, people/talent acquisition, diversification/innovation and product development," he added.

Like many manufacturing firms, Mar-Bal has been challenged in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. "We became part of the public health community overnight," Steven Balogh said in a news release.

Mar-Bal was designated an essential business and was able to keep all of its facilities open during the pandemic. The firm had daily internal briefings with plant, department and HR managers. Steven Balogh said that these daily preparations "allowed us to get ahead of the curve to protect our people while moving production forward."

On the strategy side during the pandemic, Scott Balogh said that Mar-Bal implemented a rolling 12-month strategic plan and "had to reengage with tough decisions starting with pay cuts from the top." Luckily, he added, the firm was able to avoid furloughs and has still been able to make new hires.

Post-COVID, Scott Balogh said that the global environment "will be completely different, with a more regional focus, and trade will be more difficult. … People and talent will be even more important, so as to capitalize on opportunities in this new landscape."

Mar-Bal today provides customers with a range of thermoset composite solutions, including part design, specialized material formulations, decorating, assembly and customized automation. On Sept. 18, Scott Balogh said that some of Mar-Bal's success has come from "cross-collaborating," including getting ideas from the firm's customers.

Mar-Bal has stayed open to new ideas in general. "Innovation doesn't happen when you're having a meeting," he added.

Anthony Lignetta, proprietary products director, said Sept. 18 that Mar-Bal ownership "likes to grow and be involved. … They want to add talent and resources and they're always learning and willing to do something different. … Nothing is ever off the table."

Steady growth has been a constant for Mar-Bal.

"If you look at our portfolio 20 years ago vs. today, you'll see that we've been asked to do a lot of different things," Scott Balogh said. "In insulators, we were the smallest guy, and now we're an innovator and a low-cost producer. But we've also been able to keep to our core and we know what our capabilities are."

"We do well in a tough space as a custom molder," Lignetta added. "And we can grow on the materials side."

Looking ahead, the Baloghs are looking to get younger family members involved with Mar-Bal. A "family boot camp" was held in the summer of 2019 with this goal in mind.

"Our job is to develop people and customers for one year, two years, five years down the road," Scott Balogh said. "We have to be disciplined and we have to be innovative."