Running toward the storm: ARPM 'healthy, thriving' and shining during tough times

INDIANAPOLIS—Many business leaders would say they are most successful when they keep their heads down, maintain inclusiveness and resist the urge to be reactionary to market headwinds.

The mission of the Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers is precisely the opposite.

The 13-year-old ARPM, a group whose very constitution mandates that it gather all the knowledge it can to assist others first, serves as a beacon for its 105 member companies—especially when times are tough.

And a pandemic, PFAS, choked supply chains, work force availability and rampant volatility in raw material pricing have provided all the turbulence necessary—and then some—for ARPM to demonstrate its value.

"We still hear from many company owners and presidents who tell us those conference calls and what we offered as far as educational forums and best practices during the pandemic helped them make it through," Letha Keslar, managing director of ARPM, told Rubber News. "Even through COVID we were running between 90 and 92 percent of participation with our membership, which was amazing.

"And that is what makes ARPM unique. We don't just live the connection with our members in helping out, it is what we do as a part of our mission."

Keslar characterized ARPM today as "healthy and thriving," and the organization continues to increase its offerings.

"In 2019, our board set forth the goals of growth and retention," she said. "We wanted to increase our brand awareness and our value, and we did that. Those goals remain relevant today."

Rubber News recently sat down with Keslar and four ARPM member business representatives (and board members) to discuss the state of the non-profit.

Each representative noted that ARPM has been invaluable to their business in one way or another over the last several years.

"We had a bit of a double whammy," said Donovan Lonsway, vice president of sales and marketing at BRP Manufacturing Co., a molding supplier based in Lima, Ohio. "We were in the process of transitioning into an (Employee Stock Ownership Program), buying out three owners.

"So not only did we have the day-to-day stress of the marketplace and supply issues, we also had a pretty healthy bank loan to pay every month. I kept saying my liver could not take any more of this COVID stuff."

With assistance from ARPM, Lonsway said BRP learned to adapt.

"We adjusted," he said. "We were forced to change raw materials and forced to change ingredients because of a lack of supply. But where ARPM came in was the networking. When you are in the heat of the battle, you don't really realize what is going on outside of your little world."

Lonsway said the quarterly ARPM meetings and the group's general resources assisted BRP in discovering how other firms were dealing with certain issues.

"With ARPM, I didn't feel like we were on an island," he said. "Everybody was kind of going through the same thing. ARPM has some first-class professionals within it. ... It is a sounding board for everyone."

The pandemic has had a very real and lasting effect on non-tire rubber product companies.

For three years, Zoom and Team meetings were the norm. Those virtual gatherings, while valuable, still missed the mark—even for ARPM.

"We are a smaller company, so the pandemic did not effect us greatly," said Marel Riley-Ryman, president of the 27-employee Southern Michigan Rubber Inc., based in Three Rivers, Mich. "We were considered essential. But I know from ARPM's perspective that not being able to get together impacted us greatly. Zoom is wonderful, but it just isn't the same."

Bill Bernardo, CEO of Ebco Inc. of Elgin, Ill., and a new ARPM board member, said his company initially "did not use ARPM as much as we should have."

"The big thing was we had the 'Great Resignation.' We lost a lot of employees, maybe 20 to 25 percent of our work force. Early on, this was very difficult to deal with.

"But in our business the interesting thing is other companies seemed to be suffering more than we were. We compete with billion-dollar corporations ... and in the hose business, Ebco had so many opportunities we could not keep up with them. Gates, ContiTech ... they were scrambling to find anybody to make their parts.

"So our business grew substantially during COVID."

Work force issues caused Ebco "to change its culture" with a somewhat new business philosophy.

"We had to change the culture," he said. "I'm from an older generation, so we never talked about culture. All of a sudden this is a thing, so it had to be addressed."

As Ebco ownership transitioned recently from Bernardo to his children, a new generation stepped in that seemed to understand the importance of meeting with people at all levels of the company, communicating the successes, challenges and directions of the firm.

"It is a general sensitivity to the work force that we have implemented," Bernardo said. "We always were concerned about them, but (now) it is about ensuring that they are happy. It was not just about money, but about feeling good and being heard."

Rich Balka, president and CEO of Trenton, N.J.-based Home Rubber Co., said an initial drop-off in business occurred for about three months during the onset of the pandemic as the company's traditional backlog tripled.

Business quickly returned for the urban-based rubber products supplier, just in time to meet labor issues that were two-fold in cause.

While younger workers "who did not appreciate the value of working a full day" presented a problem, the technical talent being lost to attrition—the average age of rubber industry workers is between 58 and 60 years—is just as concerning to Balka.

"Trenton was Akron before Akron was Akron," he said. "We have been here for 142 years, generating a lot of tribal knowledge that is challenging to pass on. But for our base workers, inner city schools are horrible. Multi-generational poverty is horrible. Kids never had role models to show them what it means to work a full day and come back the next day, drug-free, and do the same thing all over again."

Through associations like ARPM, Home Rubber has been able to rediscover its footing in the work force.

"When it comes to specific training in our industry, such as safety training for mills, calenders and those sorts of things, you have to have peer networking," Balka said. "Everyone has a business strategy, but nothing is as valuable as peer networking.

"And that is the value of ARPM in a nutshell."

If companies thought FKMs were difficult to acquire during COVID, they are about to get more difficult, at least according to the conventional wisdom surrounding the PFAS problem.

Regulations attempting to address PFAS are chaotic at best, as the EU leads the way, the U.S. EPA and FDA follow and states within the U.S. attempt their own recourse.

"My reaction? Is throwing up an option? We were just discussing this at ARPM," Riley-Ryman said. "And this is where I am going to depend on ARPM for the ability to look at 104 other member companies and see who is doing what in response.

"Because we are smaller at Southern Michigan Rubber, it is more difficult for us. There are people out there (who are) a lot more knowledgeable than I am. I am not going to reinvent the wheel. I will lean on the people I trust for guidance."

Lonsway added that he already has signed up for an upcoming ARPM symposium on the issue.

"We are going to listen and learn," he said. "We rely on ARPM and that network to guide us."

Bernardo echoed Lonsway's "listen and learn" posture.

"We basically are in the same boat," Bernardo said. "This is out of our hands. The government is going to do what they are going to do and we have no control over this. The question is, what will America do?

"All we can do is listen and learn ... I don't even know that lobbying is going to help."

Balka added that the U.S. has different challenges than the EU, and PFAS regulations should be determined accordingly.

"The key to ARPM is the 'A,' " he said. "Our military is heavily invested in and reliant on FKMs, as is NASA. And it is not going to be easy to drop that. We have to look at specific types of PFAS in FKMs ... or wait whatever period of time is needed for research and development to catch up. And that, I think, will be a very long time.

"There are reasons that FKMs are popular for the applications they are in."

Balka noted that chemical companies already are "putting away more money than they did for asbestos litigation."

"When I bought Home Rubber in 1996, the company still was receiving blanket, catch-all legal letters (written) to anyone who was within a 100-mile radius of anywhere asbestos was discovered," he said. "My guess is we all get caught up in this mouse trap as well."

Keslar said ARPM has assembled courses "with very smart people in the industry" to address the PFAS issue, and is running a series of educational programs that are free to members.

"We know this is going to trickle down and affect all of us," Keslar said. "And we need to have a voice when it does."

ARPM's first course covered 'PFAS explained,' and the group offered a second course announcing the most up-to-date stances of the EU, U.S., EPA and specific U.S. states in the PFAS regulatory conversation.

ARPM has included resources from larger chemical companies like Chemours, which already has a presence on Capitol Hill, Keslar said.

ARPM members realize no issue is an island unto itself. Most of the prescient topics today in the rubber world—non-tire and tire alike—affect each other in a symbiotic way.

For instance, ARPM has numerous resources for EV part production, such as what will be needed now and in the future.

"But right now, PFAS offers bigger fish to fry ... or keep safe, depending on your perspective," Keslar said.

Riley-Ryman said ARPM remains a beacon as industry waters become cloudy.

"There are a lot of people out there who are not members who could benefit from membership," she said.

Lonsway noted that the diversity of ARPM's membership should be cultivated.

"We all come from different backgrounds, different markets," he said. "But all of us take a lot of pride in this industry, and it is one that is damn rewarding. ARPM can help spread that message.

"And we are proud of that."

ARPM has come a long way in its relatively short, 13-year existence.

The non-profit added its 100th and 101st members in April 2020, and today counts more than 105 businesses as member companies, according to ARPM's Keslar.

ARPM came into being in 2010 after branching off of the Rubber Manufacturers Association, which at the time mostly focused on its tire manufacturing members.

Essentially, the non-tire folks needed to find a new home to share information and best practices. There were 35 members in the old General Products Group under the RMA, and ARPM did not convert all those companies in its nascence.

With access to international standards, training, cost-reduction programs, networking, industry benchmarking data, a COVID-19 resource center and more, ARPM offers rare and unique avenues to glean industry knowledge, networking paths that are proving to be more important today than ever.

As the pandemic wanes and the PFAS predicament presents itself, ARPM once again is ready to run toward the storm.

"ARPM is so different from other associations that my company runs," Keslar said. "The overall goal is to offer as many resources as possible. But at ARPM, we have members who are large enough to have significant resources themselves. They join us and then they have a voice in the conversations of those who are making a difference on a federal and international level.

"The wide breadth of opportunities for our members is very exciting."