2021 Rubber News Executive of the Year: Steadfast leader listens first

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio—In any company, employees need the proper tools to complete the job, a lesson that Mechanical Rubber Co. Inc. CEO Cedric Glasper learned while growing up in Hazelwood, Mo.

Glasper, 54, has been named the 2021 Rubber News Executive of the Year, and his selection is due in large part to that quality and others gleaned throughout his life, beginning in the 25,000-person suburb that sits just northwest of St. Louis.

From the 80,000-sq.-ft. Mechanical Rubber manufacturing campus in Strongsville, Ohio, just west of Cleveland, Glasper recalled assisting his father, Ted, a UPS driver, as the two tinkered away under the hood of the family car.

"My father loved working on cars. I was holding the flashlight and he asked me to hand him a precision screwdriver, and that is not what I gave him," Glasper told Rubber News. "He immediately said, 'I need the right tools for the right job!'

"And that stuck with me. My people can't succeed if I don't give them the right tools to succeed."

Those people include the 14 or so Mechanical Rubber employees at the Strongsville facility, as well as the 18 (or so) employees at the 54,000-sq.-ft. Warwick, N.Y., campus, where the seals, gaskets and custom contract company has been based since 1941.

While Glasper may not be doling out hand tools to workers, he is passing along his values, including hard work, diligence, independence and integrity—and those are just a few that were cited by his colleagues and employees.

Glasper also is quick to embrace the uncomfortable—often couched in the unknown—for the sake of personal and professional growth.

"There are two types of change," Glasper said. "Change that happens to you and change that you make happen. Moving to different neighborhoods all my life, you have to adapt and communicate with all types of people. This really helped me in my professional life, as it did my two siblings as well—they also learned this.

"We talk to everyone and we are not one-sided in our communications."

Glasper said he likes to run a "flat organization," and prides himself on being approachable while ensuring his employees at all levels communicate clearly with each other.

"It's exactly why I don't like (the term) managers—I need leaders," he said. "I look at it as a wagon wheel—there are spokes and there is the hub, and you can be one or the other. This is what I try to teach to new hires."

The traits that Glasper has imparted to both tenured workers and new hires alike are not lost on them.

Alisa Sherow, who has worked at Mechanical Rubber in quality compliance for 14 years, said she has learned much under Glasper's leadership.

"I consider him a friend as well as a great boss," Sherow said. "I have always been encouraged to be the best I can be. I am continually amazed by the up-to-date knowledge of Cedric in this field. He is always willing to consult on questions related to the rubber industry ... and the many specifications and requirements that our customers request.

"Cedric works harder than anybody I have ever met, which is why the company is so successful. Employees want to emulate his honesty and integrity."

Glasper last was featured in Rubber News for his efforts toward a more diverse manufacturing floor, and is the first person of color to be honored as the publication's Executive of the Year.

He has led Mechanical Rubber since 1995, through the ups and downs of mergers and acquisitions, a global pandemic, rampant inflation and the turbulence of supply line challenges. Through sharp business acumen, Glasper has the company on pace to double its sales in 2022, without even considering the benefits to come from the infrastructure bill recently signed by President Biden.

"As we speak, next year we are potentially close to doubling our sales, and this (estimate) is without the infrastructure bill, which I was greatly looking forward to passing," Glasper said. "If we can get a second shift going in Ohio, as is the plan next year, this should reduce lead times and catch overflows.

"All of this is organic, through our existing customers."

When Glasper would watch his mother, Lillian, on the phone in the kitchen of their Missouri home in the 1970s, there was a lot of head-nodding and "uh-huh ... yes, tell me more ... uh-huh, I see."

"I would ask her, 'Who are you talking to? Why weren't you saying anything?' And she replied that most of the time people just want you to listen. They don't need you to solve their problems, they just want you to listen."

Like the tools-of-the-trade epiphany gleaned from his father, Glasper said his mother taught him the art of quiet, purposeful listening.

Lillian Glasper worked at Lincoln Co., now SKF Lincoln, a lubrication systems and instrument company that remains known for its well-made grease guns. Like Hazelwood, the Lincoln production facility where Lillian worked was just outside St. Louis.

"And that was a big moment for me," Glasper said. "To my parents' credit, they talked—and listened—to anyone and everyone, and they went anywhere and everywhere in their travels. They still do now, even in their 80s."

While Ted Glasper was a Teamster, Lillian was a member of the United Auto Workers. The fighting union spirit pervaded the Glasper home, and the virtues of union membership continue to shape Cedric Glasper today, he said, though Mechanical Rubber is not a union shop.

"So, it was pretty clear what circles we fit into growing up," he said. "My father also had the philosophy to move every seven to 10 years, staying ahead of the riff raff and keeping the equity in the house growing."

Glasper has lived in the inner city, suburbs and rural areas, all of which added to his ability to communicate seamlessly with those from all walks of life, color and creed.

"My brother still travels ad nauseum, and my sister started a tutoring school that is now accredited," he said. "She really knows business."

From Hazelwood, Glasper attended the University of Missouri at Columbia in mechanical engineering, though his ultimate career goal remained a mystery to him at that point.

"During undergraduate work I had to take calculus, and that became a little—no, a lot—hard for me," he said. "I remember I had a 7 a.m. Fortran class and it was like they were speaking Greek. I just wasn't ready for it."

A spring break trip to visit his brother serving in the U.S. Air Force at Norton Air Force Base (closed in 1994) in San Bernardino, Calif., was particularly important, as the location "was the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life, with the fog blowing out," Glasper said.

It became an immediate goal to move there, and after saving money by working odd part-time jobs while attending university, he did just that.

"It was then that I learned that you could do more than one thing at a time," he said, emulating his father, who cut grass and worked other jobs in addition to his full-time work with UPS. "We always had a work ethic in our family where you got out of bed and you went to work. No exceptions."

The move after graduation at Columbia took Glasper to California Polytechnic State University, where he majored in urban planning.

"It was either that or landscape architecture, and I found out you had to learn Latin with that degree—no thanks," he said.

Glasper was hired out of college in the early 1990s by the Itran-Tompkins Rubber Corp., a bonded metal and custom-molded rubber company based in New Jersey—and he moved again, this time from his bucolic San Bernardino setting to a hardscrabble section of New Jersey, "where it was gray and dismal-looking."

This was in 1995.

"1995 was huge," Glasper said. "New Jersey is a little different than most places to get around in."

He was about an hour-and-a-half outside Manhattan, in his 30s, wide-eyed with ambition and imbued with equal parts fear and excitement at the prospect of purchasing his first company.

A company called Mechanical Rubber, based in Warwick, N.Y., had filed for bankruptcy, and its molding and extrusion operations were purchased by Itran-Tompkins. Glasper saw the die-cutting operations at Mechanical Rubber as his chance to strike out on his own.

"(The purchase) was entirely based on fear," he said. "At the time I was developing a philosophy about fear, which will make you do one of two things—either stand still or move.

"And being that I didn't know what I didn't know, I only knew that standing still was not going to work for me. For my mother or father, becoming a manager would have been the pinnacle for them. And for awhile, that was my world.

"I know I can manage. In time, I learned about leadership and management, and the difference between the two. With leadership, you are further out in the great beyond, so to speak. You are the visionary. I have always had the drive to pair with the vision, and that has kind of been my sweet spot in putting the two together.

"Now I can see the players in the industry—and I can see my industry, and I can see it absolutely."

With its pedigree in defense applications, Mechanical Rubber began in 1941 and evolved with the wars of the 20th century, manufacturing custom rubber and plastics products for the aerospace, military, transit and industrial markets.

Currently, Mechanical Rubber's defense contracts include seal and gasket production, and sound- and vibration-damping equipment. The company fabricates sheet rubber for the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as the Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy lift and transport helicopter, both of which are flown by the U.S. Army.

The company was chosen in 2017 as a supplier for mounting pads for the International Space Station, after NASA engineers discovered a Mechanical Rubber compound that met their strict requirements for space applications.

And historically, Mechanical Rubber played a small part in NASA's iconic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in July 1969, supplying a high pressure window gasket for the Lunar Excursion Module.

The company currently maintains contracts with Airbus, Lockheed, Sikorsky and Gulfstream, among many others on the aviation side, according to the company's website.

Only since the early 2020 acquisition of Durox Co., a former Wabtec company, has Mechanical Rubber seen its rail and transit sales increase, assisted by a $3 billion investment announced last year by Amtrak Corp. Durox products, with the brand still intact, are manufactured at the Ohio location.

"We needed to wrap our arms around that (Amtrak investment)," Glasper said. "In April we became one of the top three (rubber product) providers for the rail industry."

At the end of 2019, Mechanical Rubber branched out to the West Coast, with plans for both a manufacturing site as well as corporate offices in Richmond, Calif. Thus far only the sales office is up and running, with the delay in setting up production a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We found the right fit in California," he said. "The project is alive but dormant. When we discussed (the Richmond site) recently, cooler heads prevailed and we are going to be patient. We have retained some really good prospects (in aerospace and defense) there."

The Strongsville location is celebrating one year this winter, and sales were excellent there in the first and second quarters of 2021, Glasper said. Mechanical Rubber Ohio is up 3 percent year-to-date (boosted by rail and transit) and the New York location has been running flat thus far.

"The first quarter of 2021 was the best first quarter in a long time," Glasper said. "The second quarter for Ohio was phenomenal. We were rocking and rolling."

But the pandemic already had begun to take its toll.

The first Glasper heard of it, he was walking through LAX at the end of 2019, and a case of the no-longer-novel coronavirus was reported at the airport.

It marked the last time he was at the Richmond office. Adding to the chaos, the Durox acquisition was just around the corner in the new year.

"By the time the ink had dried on the documents I signed (with the acquisition of Durox), I still did not know how the two companies would be integrated," Glasper said. "How much time would be required? I had about a 24-hour period of panic that I had not experienced before."

Fortunately, Mechanical Rubber was deemed an essential company, and the acquisition foretold a promising future, led by a CEO with a Jeffersonian philosophy.

"You have to get to a certain vantage point before you can get to the next point—because you can't see that far from the first one," Glasper said. "That's where I am now, that next hill."

Supply chain problems and pricing volatility for the materials that Mechanical Rubber uses—namely silicone, FKM, natural rubber and EPDM—are dogging the company, just as they have frustrated so many other manufacturers.

"You can try to reformulate using similar compounds, but one cake is always going to be different from another," Glasper said.

Strong customer relationships—via the communication skills that have become a Glasper hallmark—and a multi-supplier philosophy have buoyed Mechanical Rubber through the down times.

"But the world has gotten much smaller," Glasper cautioned. "There have been major mergers and acquisitions, force majeures and the shuttering of plants.

"Sometimes we don't get the attention we should get, but there is always someone bigger than you. My concern going forward is to create a self-sustaining enterprise, and I won't be happy until I get there. With this, you can respond one way or another to every prospect's needs—through molding, splicing, fabrication ... the whole nine yards."

Mechanical Rubber is considered a mid-sized company, though Glasper noted that "to the government, we are small ... and to the bank, we are small."

He is in the process of connecting with JobsOhio, an economic development agency in Columbus, to start a second shift at the Strongsville location.

But the hiring and retention problems are real, and the causes, Glasper said, go far beyond any work force lethargy generated by government subsidies issued during the pandemic.

"Birth rates, immigration, education, opportunity—all of these are causes of this," he said. "There are a lot of people (working) off the books everywhere. It goes back to civil rights and the quest for equal opportunities for jobs, as well as fair treatment on the job and opportunities within the job for advancement.

"Unions have been broken and there is more competition, and there is offshoring."

On the family level, Glasper noted the lack of emotional and financial support that can exist in broken homes.

"We have had a 40- to 50-year race to the bottom," he said. "It occurs slowly, like watching the grass grow. Before you know it, an entire generation of people have been disenfranchised. Eventually you just start to kill people's hope.

"Then you go where you feel loved and appreciated—but it's never a positive movement. The prison system has removed millions of people—and their intellectual capital—from the work force. And we just gave this away."

Glasper noted that opportunities "were slim to none" outside of St. Louis, not far from Ferguson.

"People finally erupted (in Ferguson). If you don't give a person an opportunity to feed his family, what do you think you are going to get?" Glasper said. "When I hire, not everything is plug-and-play. I have to work with the person to fit in, and we tend to bring people on board slowly."

Within the last year, Mechanical Rubber has hired several engineers and quality control employees, but manufacturing floor jobs remain a difficult proposition.

Glasper tends to fall back on a known quantity—the listening skills learned from his mother—to gauge worker morale.

"I tend to just try and listen," he said. "I'm listening to the shortcomings of the company, yes, as I am a strong proponent of customer satisfaction, but I am also listening to those worker relationships and their problems."

Rubber may be in just about every facet of daily life, but minorities in the rubber industry—especially at the executive level—can be a rare commodity.

Glasper told Rubber News earlier this year that he "does not spend a lot of time thinking about being Black."

"I don't spend a lot of time focusing on the fact I am Black," he said. "I know who I am. I'm fine with that. What I focus on is my competitor or my adversary, and they are the opportunity."

Glasper said he does not have a quota or threshold he tries to meet in hiring those with diverse backgrounds, no "Rooney Rule" to which he adheres. Rather, he focuses on those with diverse thought processes.

"If you can check the boxes in the interview—and we typically have about a 50-50 male-to-female ratio—I can only interview those who apply," he said. "I work very hard to put the right people in the right place with the right tools, and things will flow. People are already motivated. You just need to find what people need to be even better—and that requires listening."

Mentorship is important in any stage of life, and can be crucial for minorities breaking in to an industry that too often is monochromatic.

"How fast can you learn, and are you willing to do it? Do you have the stomach for it? How much can you handle? How much of yourself are you willing to give?" he asked.

Citing "Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?" by Reginald Lewis, Glasper said the chief barrier in anyone's life is themself.

"It is all about perception," he said. "Lewis was acquiring companies he knew nothing about—but he figured it out. There is no book, there is no manual. Every enterprising situation is different.

"You need to leave the house, leave the block and talk to others. Just because it is not comfortable or you cannot relate to something is not good enough. You have to go outside yourself, outside the norm."

The waters are going to be rough, Glasper said, filled with the concerns that accompany a dearth in qualified industry applicants, a global pandemic and supply line difficulties.

Handling such challenges from the top can require blinders, a head-down attitude that pushes a company, for better or for worse, through the tough times.

"Does a comet look at its tail, at its own destruction? The comet is busy going where it's going," Glasper said. "If you have a plan to keep going ... to keep going ... to keep going ... to get to that end result, that is what matters.

"How fast can I get through it? I know there are rough patches. Sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back. But we are making progress, right? Let the failures germinate a bit—maybe take another two steps back—but keep moving. You can use fear to your advantage.

"The water is going to be rough. What will you do in response?"