Hovan has big plans for Lauren International

CAMBRIDGE, Ohio—Mike Hovan is coming home to Lauren International.

The firm recently named him its new chief operating officer, bringing Hovan back to the company where he spent the majority of his career. He joined Lauren Manufacturing in 1993 and quickly rose to higher levels of responsibility during the course of his two-decade career there.

He served as president of Lauren Manufacturing; President of Edgetech, another former Lauren International business unit; and vice president of Lauren International.

When Edgetech was sold to Quanex in 2011, Hovan went with the firm and served as senior vice president of sales and marketing, then was promoted to president/general manager of Quanex's largest business unit—Mikron Industries Inc.

But there's no place like home.

“It's awesome,” Hovan said of his return. “I cut my teeth and grew up with Lauren, and being able to come back to that same environment has been pretty exciting for me.”

Lauren currently operates nine divisions, with about 90 percent of its business focused in the rubber or plastics industry. Lauren Manufacturing focuses on custom seals and extrusions, among other rubber products, while Lauren Plastics deals with a wide range of high end and commodity plastics compounds. LMI Custom Mixing is a custom rubber compounding joint venture between Lauren and Meteor Sealing Systems, now a subsidiary of Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd.

The group's other businesses focus in a number of different areas, some also utilizing polymer compounds. They include: Lauren Agrisystems, which makes dairy milk liners and hoses from rubber compounds; Nurtured Pets, a producer of pet products that came from adapting its rubber coating and lamination technologies; Lauren Illumination, the firm's lighting business based on low-voltage LED technology; Lauren Innovations, its school safety software operation; and Flite Test, a producer of remote controlled aircraft.

Lauren International operates a real estate business that owns the land where most of its operations are situated.

Hovan said his main focus for 2016 is to start bringing some of these pieces under one cohesive roof. The firm is in the processing of bringing its dairy, pet and plastics divisions underneath the Lauren Manufacturing umbrella. The move essentially places all the pieces and parts related to rubber and plastics fabrication save for LMI under one division.

Similar work also is being done among the other divisions, namely with its radio controlled flight business, but ultimately Hovan envisions Lauren to operate six or seven divisions when the process is complete at the end of the year.

“It's basically trying to put the pieces that make sense together in a group,” Hovan said. “So how do we put the pieces together under Lauren Manufacturing that make sense. This gives us a nice launching pad into 2017.”

Once complete, the firm will continue to pursue its growth strategy. Hovan said the firm is positioned to take advantage of a number of opportunities, believing that Lauren's position as a middle market company is a strength, offering customers a personal touch combined with the resources of a bigger firm.

“We're placing heavy emphasis on organic growth and how we best position ourselves organizationally and with products and processes to go capture what we know is out there,” Hovan said. “It's more of what we do already. And then there are pieces that we're looking at that make sense from a bolt-on acquisition standpoint.”

Combined, Lauren Manufacturing and LMI employ more than 600 in four facilities. LMI operates out of Cambridge while Lauren Manufacturing has two facilities in New Philadelphia, Ohio, and one in Spring Lake, Mich.

Lauren Manufacturing's key product line is sealing to a variety of industries. Hovan said the firm breaks its business into vehicle and transportation, automotive, building and construction, weatherstripping, point of purchase markets, and emerging technologies.

The automotive side is growing, but Hovan said the firm is careful to make sure it's not becoming beholden to that market as a percent of its overall sales. A very small portion of the firm's business deals with oil and gas, which makes it insulated from the downturn in that particular market.

Overall, he said Lauren's wide diversification of markets and customers has buffered the firm against any singular market specific move.

“We're seeing that there's more input on our side,” Hovan said of the automotive industry.

“Automotive used to be very defined specifications and very prescriptive. Now it's "here's my problem, help me fix this so I can focus on other things.' We tend to be partnering much more with automotive now instead of just being a supplier. They're treating us more as somebody they can bring in and help design solutions for their problems. It's much more collaborative now than it ever has been.”

And the firm is even more diversified in the wake of its Edgetech divestiture, which gave Lauren the cash it needed to grow its polymer-related business—namely establishing and growing its plastics division over the course of the last five years.

“We span the range now,” Hovan said. “We're looking at lots of companies now struggling to find all that engineering and design talent they used to have access to.

“So they're coming to people like us who have the depth and resources in design and engineering and process knowledge, and now materials knowledge not just on the rubber side, but all the way through your TPOs, your regular olefins, all the way out to engineered plastics and everything in between. We can draw on any one of those and create a solution for somebody.”

Its LMI joint venture has played an important role in the firm's evolution. Hovan said with the firm's recently announced expansion, where LMI will add 50,000 square feet to its plant and a third mixing line to increase production by 50 percent to 60 million pounds per year, gives Lauren the flexibility to grow further.

“The group could potentially struggle to grow if it didn't have a go-to source for the quality we've come to expect out of our raw material supply, meaning our compounded rubber,” Hovan said. “We'd only be able to grow and stretch the capacity here so far.

“By adding a third mixer, that opens up a massive amount of opportunity for Lauren Manufacturing to grow organically or bolt something on. I still believe this is one of the most state-of-the-art compounding facilities in the world.”

Hovan believes giving back to the community is a priority and is actively involved with many local organizations. They include his serving as a youth baseball coach for Dover Community Baseball; serving as the chairman of the board of trustees for Union Hospital; YMCA Indian Guides tribe chief; and capital campaign chairman of the Salvation Army of Tuscarawas County fundraiser among others.

“It started with Dale Lauren Foland,” Hovan said of the company's founder who passed away in January. “Dale just reinforced the importance of the company giving back to the community in which it operates. Therein lies the foundation for everything that we do. Dale very much believed in giving time and dollars to worthwhile causes.

“He encouraged, and we've subsequently encouraged, both Kevin and myself and senior leadership, we've encouraged our employees from the top down to find causes you can get involved in and make an impact and help.”