Matrix 4 growing, making progress by ‘leaps and bounds'

Injection molder Matrix 4 Inc. is prepping for growth, adding machinery and redefining what it means to play in manufacturing as it settles into its fifth year under owner Patricia Miller, the Woodstock, Ill.-based company's CEO and self-styled visionary.

"As we go into five years, we continue to kind of make that leaps and bounds of progress that we're wanting to do, and at least validating that the strategy we put in place five years ago still seems to make sense, and it still makes it worthwhile to continue to move forward with the business," Miller said in a phone interview.

Miller took over the company in July 2014 from her grandfather, Raymond Wenk Sr., a tool and die maker who founded Matrix 4 — though, he opted for the Roman numeral IV — in 1976. The company molded various parts for the automotive and consumer products industries.

Wenk died earlier this year, on April 27. He was 83. But much of his entrepreneurial spirit is now embraced by Miller, who is transitioning the company from old-school plastics manufacturing to what she calls a "design and manufacturing house."

"Five years ago, I said we wanted to be a design and manufacturing company because I really felt like having true design and manufacturing together would allow us to work on products that we cared about, but also make sure we were looking at aesthetics and not just functionality," Miller said.

Part of that shift included hiring a full-time industrial designer to launch the design side of the business. That role was filled by Kyle Swen, a founding partner of San Francisco-based design firm Astro Studios Inc. who is now chief design officer at Matrix 4.

"For us to pull in a world-renowned designer into our facility is very foreign for a plastics company to do," she said, adding that it opens up opportunities to go after products for design-savvy brands like Shinola, Nike Inc. and PepsiCo Inc.

The focus on design is also part of a larger strategy by the company to compile an in-house material library that also includes more sustainable options. For instance, Matrix 4 has sampled a thermoplastic polyurethane material with a small percentage of cork from Swedish materials firm Hexpol AB. The company is also testing materials made from coffee grounds and bamboo.

Beyond design, 2018 marked another feat for the company. In August last year, it was named No. 1,056 on the Inc. 5000 list, the magazine's annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

It was the second year in a row Matrix 4 was named to the list, jumping more than 3,000 spots and hitting a three-year growth rate of 466 percent, according to the ranking. The company's sales for 2017 were reported at $6.8 million.

"When I bought M4, it was basically post-recession dead, burning money," Miller recalled.

But the top executive took what she called an "aggressive approach" to rebuild the business and leverage the machinery, equipment, talent and other assets that were already in place, while executing a new business model and strategy.

Now Matrix 4, which employs around 50, even has its own hashtag: #MakeMeaningfully.

"It's taken a little bit of time for us to be able to morph to where we want to be, but I really think that as we go into this fifth year that we're kind of in the position where we're poised to now start executing against the strategy I put in place a few years back," she said.

That aggressive approach also extends to the company's growth goals.

In 2018, Matrix 4 had sales of $10 million. Miller said she expects to do the same or slightly higher in 2019, as the company kicks off an expansion and renovation of its Woodstock headquarters.

At the 90,000-square-foot facility, Miller said a 12-week project is underway that includes raising the ceilings, adding an additional bay for large-tonnage machinery, tearing out offices and shifting the entrance.

"Our desire is to optimize square footage to be as operationally effective, culturally honored and strategically aligned to our brand," she said in a follow-up email to Plastics News.

The company has budgeted about $2.5 million for the project.

"It's as much of a structural and an operational upgrade as it is an aesthetic and user-space upgrade," Miller said.

In addition, Matrix 4 is buying machines for added capacity.

Last year, Miller estimated the company invested around $2 million in capital equipment, which included the purchase of two Haitian injection molding machines: a 618-ton Zhafir Zeres all-electric press and an 845-ton Jupiter II servo-hydraulic two-platen molding machine from sales and service agent Absolute Haitian Corp.

More recently, the company added its largest molding machine earlier this year: a 1,050-ton Jupiter II wide-platen press from Absolute Haitian. Miller said the new press was a $300,000-plus investment for the company, with setup and automation factored in.

"We wanted to be able to expand the product range that we could manufacture in-house," she said of the large-tonnage press. "We continued to hear requests from clients based on their product lines that there were jobs we were passing up because we didn't have that larger tonnage in-house."

Now Matrix 4 has a tonnage range of 75-1,050 tons and is able to monitor the equipment in real time as a result of a 16-month launch and full implementation of IQMS Inc.'s cloud-based enterprise resource planning software.

Miller said the company invested roughly $500,000 in the system, including associated costs like infrastructure, equipment and setup.

"Some things just became more priority than others. Obviously, we had to grow the business and bring in new equipment and focus on building out the team," she said of the past five years. "Now, we're really starting to say, 'OK. We've checked the box on all the things we need to do. Let's start doing what we really want to do.'"