Family run business: South Bend Modern Molding adapts

MISHAWAKA, Ind.—South Bend Modern Molding Inc. has changed a lot over the years, even in the last five. Like most rubber job shops, it had to adapt throughout its nearly 75-year history as the global economic landscape evolved.

But one thing has remained the same: It's always been family owned.

“The biggest way we compete is service,” said President Don Zimmerman, son of owner Chuck Zimmerman. His father now serves as the firm's chief financial officer.

Don Zimmerman is the second generation to lead and the third generation to work for South Bend Modern Molding. His grandfather, also named Don, came to work for the firm as its chemist in the 1980s after a long career with Uniroyal.

“We have the capabilities, and we need to prove that to our customer base, and then we need to show them how we can service not only those parts but then aide into other things,” Don Zimmerman added. “Historically you used to just make the part, and that was good enough, but now if you can't bring some engineering to the table, or for the rubber industry some chemistry help, then you aren't a realistic player anymore. So getting our customers to understand that we can help them and become a part of their engineering team is critical.”

South Bend has diversified to the point where no market accounts for more than 25 percent of its total sales with automotive about 20 percent. Don Zimmerman said that kind of diversification helps offset peaks and valleys. The only time he can remember all of the firm's industries being down was in 2008, during the great recession.

South Bend has always been a family owned business, just not always the same family. Chuck Zimmerman bought 50 percent of the business in 1976 from the daughter and son-in-law of Jon Borah, who founded the company in 1942.

At the time, Don Zimmerman said the company employed about seven including management, but over the next 15 years sales grew to $2 million. South Bend operated as a typical job shop, making very basic transfer and compression molded rubber parts.

In the 1990s, South Bend was forced to change—diversifying its range by adding injection molding, and by hiring Russ Johnson to be the firm's engineering manager and Keith Elcock as its technical director. Chuck Zimmerman bought the remaining 50 percent stake of the business, and the company relocated to a new 100,000-sq.-ft. facility, five times the size of its original.

“The industry was changing at the time,” Don Zimmerman said. “You didn't have the mom and pops together anymore.”

Don Zimmerman joined the company in 2000 after working part time in the maintenance department in the mid-90s while he attended high school. With South Bend completely moved into its new facility, he saw plenty of areas that needed to improve. He set the company on a course to use its new quality certifications to develop customers in the automotive industry, develop an overseas supply base to augment production at South Bend and find a product line or technology that was unique to the firm.

And he sold his vision for the firm with a simple mantra—”whatever it takes.”

“When you're taking that mantra of "whatever it takes,' and you're bringing in new products and new things, people get excited about it,” Zimmerman said. “It's different; they're not doing the same thing every day. I can't even tell you what project we'll be working on tomorrow because someone could call this afternoon, and it could be something brand new for us.”

The firm began to assemble products that previously were assembled at South Bend's customers' facilities, cultivated overseas suppliers and developed new customers in the automotive, office furniture and electrical industries for the better part of the 2000s.

While it was nice to come home and work for his father's company, Don Zimmerman knew that just like anyone else he had to earn the respect of co-workers.

“It wasn't like I was brand new to the operation, but I was coming in with a different vision of where the operation needed to go,” he said.

“Naturally I'm a hard worker. I won't say I had to go above and beyond, but in any decision, whether it's business or life, you always have to be able to prove why you're doing what you're doing. Adding some of the new processes, I had to show on a numbers basis why it made sense for us to move forward and do this.”

South Bend eventually would find that unique technology to market—recycled rubber tires. And it's led to some pretty strong growth. Don Zimmerman said over the last four years the firm has doubled its sales, and the retail business—mostly dominated by its recycling technology—represents the most opportunity for future growth.

And with that growth has come more employment, which has also doubled to about 130.

“We still do our industrial business, without question,” Zimmerman said. “We're not going away from that, but our growth is in the recycled materials. Not only do we have the ability to take a concept to market for a company or an inventor who comes to us, but we can now have a conduit where we can bring the product into retailers as part of our broad product line.”

The initiative began in 2008, when the industry was hit hard by the recession, and South Bend had a chance to work on a research and development project involving recycled rubber tires, Zimmerman said. He wanted to find a technology line that other companies couldn't easily compete against.

“We had a little bit of a head start on competition because we were taking advantage of all the molding techniques we already had in our background,” he said. “In doing so we found that we could improve that process to get a lot of the properties that are inherent within the rubber into those applications. A lot of people using recycled tires are going to make things that are strictly weight-based just to get rid of the material, but we were using them for the energy absorbing properties.”

Over time South Bend began developing a library of products and materials, many using recycled rubber for its energy absorbing properties, including blast barriers for military applications to absorb blast waves from car bombs. Zimmerman said metal and concrete tend to be obliterated by the blasts, but the rubber material holds strong to absorb the second or third blasts.

While developing this technology, the firm discovered that it could also be used as a highway barrier, replacing concrete. The rubber material is less susceptible to cracks from the stress of the Earth, and it also produces a 14 decibel drop improvement compared to other materials, Zimmerman said.

The executive estimates the firm recycles about 1 million tires per year, and that the sound wall technology that stretches one-fourth of a mile utilizes about 82,500 recycled tires.

He also stressed that the firm's industrial business isn't going anywhere, even though its recycled/retail business is approaching 20 percent of its total sales.

“At heart we're a rubber manufacturer. We've always dealt with rubber materials,” Zimmerman said. “Scrap rubber tires were a natural fit. But as we started to dive into the properties we're trying to achieve, we've realized that rubber can only do so much. We've started to work on some hybrid recycled materials—like plastic, wood and even carpet—working to combine those different materials and ratios to build a library.”