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Survival of the Small
State's smaller manufacturers find flexibility key to survival
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Business New Haven
1/8/2001
By: Priscilla Searles
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Small manufacturing firms collectively make a major contribution to Connecticut's economy. But many don't survive in these changing times, often because they fail to be flexible or harbor outmoded or unrealistic views about what it takes to remain healthy and to grow.
Do those small manufacturing firms that remain on the Connecticut scene have some magic formula for success? Here's how a representative trio of small manufacturers have changed with the times - and how they are faring today.
Stelray Plastic Products
Stelray Plastic Products Inc. has gone through a number of changes since it was founded in 1947. Originally headquartered in Shelton, Stelray's facility was razed by a 1974 fire. The owners weren't interested in rebuilding the business following the catastrophe, so Mortimore Saffran, who had been managing the company, decided to purchase it and operate out of rented space in Shelton.
Today Saffran serves as CFO of the precision injection-molding company, handling the financial end. His son Larry, who joined the business in 1987, serves as president.
Larry Saffran explains precision injection molding as a process of molding products to close dimensional tolerances or exact measurements. “Color-matching is very critical, [products must be] free of any surface contamination, important in industries such as aerospace and medical and pharmaceutical,” says Saffran.
Stelray in the early days of Saffran ownership were quite different than the business at the dawn of the 21st century. Moving the company to Ansonia in 1977, Mortimore Saffran began with a handful of workers producing commodity molding - relatively simple molding for houseware products, for example. Since Larry Saffran joined the business, it has become more high tech, able to attain “closer tolerances, engineering resins or plastics, more sophisticated types of materials and overall tighter quality control requirements, more sophisticated machinery,” says the younger Saffran.
Today the company has two facilities, one at 151 Wakelee Avenue in Ansonia and another in Orleans, Mass. The Ansonia location employs approximately 20 people and the Orleans facility, opened in September 1997, houses 28 workers.
“As you grow you also automate more and more,” says Larry Saffran. “For example, business needs to recognize industry changes and changes in the needs of customers and be willing to shift, to be flexible. One of the changes or additions we've made in the last several years is to do our molding in-house; we now also build molds. We were forced to do this to keep up with needs of our customers.”
The company does design, assembly, packaging, decorating, mold-making, injection molding, and product development, serving industries such as aerospace, electronic, consumer appliance, pharmaceutical, automotive and marine. Stelray does tooling internationally although most of its marketplace is located on the Eastern Seaboard and the Northeast in particular.
“We've seen good growth in our company,” says Larry Saffran. “The current economy has not seen a lot of business opportunities in Connecticut, but we are seeing it in the Northeast.
“There's an advantage to being located in Ansonia; we have a good technical labor pool,” he adds. “Connecticut generally has a good labor pool, although it is very tight. However, there is a tremendous shortage of technical workers; a lot of that pool it has dried up.
Saffran believes that Connecticut offers opportunities, especially in the plastics and injection-molding field. He points to the fact that there is an effort to provide formal plastics training in the state that is not necessarily available in other parts of the country.
In spite of his positive feelings about his own industry, Saffran cites one major shortcoming that needs to be addressed in order for business to survive.
“There needs to be continued training in contemporary manufacturing processes so we can continue to grow,” he says. “We need to continue to develop training, whether in-house or regionally or with assistance from the state.”
Weimann Brothers
Many small businesses “keep it in the family,” as it were, encouraging sons and daughters to become a part of the business. Founded in 1917, Weimann Brothers of Derby proudly points to the fifth generation of Weimann offspring who have joined the firm.
The company was founded in 1917 by Ferdinand Weimann and his son, Ferdinand Weimann Jr. Today James Fair, great-great grandson of Ferdinand senior, serves as president. Fair's two sons are also in the business, both serving as vice presidents. Fair joined the company 22 years ago; son Jeff came to work at Weimann ten years ago. (And we haven't even mentioned the various uncles and other relatives that have been in the company over the years.
The company is still located in the original building, although it has been added onto over the years. When it comes to changing with the times, Weimann Brothers can give lessons to the best of them. Starting out as tool-and-die makers and machinists, in 1917 the company, like so many others, found itself producing goods for U.S. military forces newly engaged in World War I, making tool and machine parts.
Following the Armistice, work became scarce and the company contracted. But by the late 1920s Weimann began diversifying into special machinery. It developed the nation's first automatic toothpaste tube-filler for Pepsodent. This meant that, with the entire tube-filling process automated, the toothpaste was untouched by human hands. The machine filled 50,000 tubes a day over an eight-hour shift.
At the end of Depression the need for tools and machine parts swelled and the Weimann returned to their roots as machinists. After World War II, consumer needs changed once again and Weimann looked for new marketplace niches. So it began producing small bottle caps and salt and pepper shaker tops and other metal stampings.
Today the company, which employs 19, makes its mark primarily in metal-stamping, continuing to make tops for salt and pepper shakers in addition to bottle closures, gun sights and gun parts and aircraft instrument components. In 1979, Weimann Brothers stopped tooling for other companies, which it had for years been doing for companies like Newton New Haven Die Casting. In 1988 Weimann added gun sites to its product line. It continues to do in-house tooling.
Today Weimann endeavors to stick to the knitting, according to Fair. “Weimann has gotten away from being job shop and shifted to manufacturing our own products in small niche markets.”
Weimann Brothers' ability to survive changing times by being flexible is obvious. What is less clear is how family members have been able to work with each other and avoid friction for nearly a century. “In a small business you can't be an executive with your feet on the desk,” Fair says. “You have to be hands-on in order to make the business succeed and survive.”
“Many family businesses don't survive because [the family members] fight,” Fair observes. “In order to take advantage of a close family bond, you have to be treated as equals somewhat; [the company] has to be run somewhat democratically. Some don't succeed because the father doesn't let the sons do anything - which is fatal for business. The new generation has to be allowed to be creative, to put their own ideas into practice. But the older generation has an obligation to make sure the business is still on course.”
Fair points out that it isn't just family that makes Weimann Brothers work. “Our employees are very important because if we have a good, quality group of employees we'll always have happy, satisfied customers. We still have two employees who have worked here for 50 years. One of our employees retired recently at age 90. She ran a power press that produces the salt tops. I used to pick her up every morning and bring her home and she used to thank me every day for the privilege of coming to work.”
Derby Cellular Products
Founded in 1980, Derby Cellular Products makes rubber seals for major appliance companies, the type used to keep water inside, for instance dishwashers and washing machines. Other products include seals for agricultural equipment such John Deer and Case and for heavy trucks made by Navistar (formerly International Harvester).
The closely held stock company is mostly owned by two families and associates, with about 20 stockholders in all. Frank Osak, a stockholder who has been with the company from it founding, serves as president and CEO. He and chairman Thomas Cutarelli founded company.
The business has a long history dating to the 1930s, when it began as a sponge rubber company. In 1954 it became a division of the B.F. Goodrich company, becoming one of a number of plants the company had in the Naugatuck River valley. In 1972 the plant was sold to Grand Sheet Metal.
“In 1975 a big fire hit Shelton[a different blaze from the one a year before that leveled Stelray; see above], and although the plant wasn't hit by the fire, many other buildings in Shelton were,” recalls Osak. “We operated for few months but the economic blow to Shelton after the fire caused us to shut down.”
The building remained vacant until 1978, when a private investor attempted to start up in same mode as just prior to the fire. Trying to carve a niche as an automotive supplier to companies like General Motors and Ford, the business was unsuccessful in penetrating those markets again. “The investor started to liquidate the assets in factory, and in that process Derby Cellular was formed by myself and my partner,” says Osak.
Both Osak and Cutarelli had been employed by B.F. Goodrich as plant managers, so both had a practical working knowledge of products and processes. Learning from the previous investor's mistakes, the two went after small accounts at lower volume levels, something Osak says was a key contributing factor to their success.
“You bet the farm if you are depending on large automotive accounts,” says Osak. “We have a lot of customers; we haven't put all our eggs in one basket.”
Starting with 15 employees, the company has grown to 200 workers. “Growth is a matter of picking and choosing your opportunities,” explains Osak. “We market our product through our own sales department and commissioned agents, covering all of the United States, but mostly in the middle of the country.
Osak says the present manufacturing climate is better than average, “but we're not tied to the ups and downs of the economy because we are relatively small and we have many markets to penetrate,” says Osak. “That formula may have changed recently, since we've got bigger and now we are beginning to feel the downturn of the current economy.
“Our product is needed because it is part of another product. We support [our industrial clients] with a quality product, and our success is based on their success. If they go down, so do we, like a set of dominos. But we're with solid companies.
“We're very vertically integrated; we design the product to the customer's specifications,” explains Osak. “We buy raw materials, manufacture and ship. The process is very technical and the availability of knowledgeable people from hourly [workers] right up to managers is very scant.
“We do as much in-house training as the staff can manage,” says Osak. “One of the biggest problems in Connecticut is getting a workforce that is technically trained to work in modern factories: There aren't enough people who can do the technical work. No one really takes on responsibility of training in manufacturing sciences. Connecticut is trying, but it isn't quite filling the gap yet. The motivation isn't there for people to go into the manufacturing field.”
It all begins, asserts Osak, with education.
“We must start in the early years to encourage young people to go into manufacturing,” he says. “No one points to manufacturing as a career option in high school. It's a hard thing to do, and it's going to take a lot of work to get Connecticut back into the manufacturing [forefront]. We've put all our eggs, so to speak, in the in service businesses. No economy can exist without manufacturing its own goods. It will catch up with all of us eventually.”
Osak thinks one of the problems in steering young people into the manufacturing field is that many want instant gratification. Many are unwilling to work their way up slowly, as previous generations did. And today young people going into business don't expect to spend their entire careers with one company; they know they will likely be making many moves over the span of their work lives.
Stelray Plastic Products, Weimann Brothers and Derby Cellular are very different companies, with two major things in common. All three have learned to adapt with the times, by keeping minds open and markets fluid. And all believe that a major effort must be made to train people for the manufacturing field.
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