LEADERS: Bill Bonde, left of AIW and Jonathan Fain of Teknor Apex.
There is something refreshing about a conversation with Jonathan Fain, president of Teknor Apex, a Pawtucket-based manufacturer that produces rubber and plastic compounds. Recent decades have not been kind to Rhode Island manufacturers, many of which have either moved south or shuttered plants for good.
But Fain doesn’t talk about moving, or selling to a larger competitor. Fain doesn’t talk about going public. He talks a lot about finding new uses for older products. He talks about being an old fashioned manufacturer – and succeeding. He talks about deep roots in Rhode Island.
“There is a high level of education and work ethic here,” said Fain. “There is still the mentality here that people come to a job and make a career out of it. We’re Rhode Islanders. You know, if I park more than a block from a restaurant – I go to the next restaurant.”
Yes, the state’s manufacturing base has taken significant hits. But in high-skill areas, said John C. Cronin, executive director of the Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Services, it is hitting back.
“Wages keep going up and the stability is there for a core group of progressive companies,” said Cronin.
For example, said Cronin, while several jewelry companies have closed and others are looking to consolidate, still others are at full capacity. Rhode Island’s manufacturing base, said Cronin, accounts for 20 percent of the state’s overall employment and 50 percent of its wealth creation.
Central Avenue in Pawtucket may be as good a place to find that wealth creation as any.
A block away from Teknor Apex is American Insulated Wire Corporation. AIW manufactures diverse wire products – from power cable to appliance cords.
Both companies are celebrating 75 years in business this year. Both are privately held. They routinely collaborate on research and development projects. Together, they employ more than 1,000 Rhode Islanders, and thousands of workers throughout the country.
Bill Bonde, president of AIW, values the area’s labor pool.
“What we have in New England is an experienced and talented workforce,” he said. “They pick up the nuances that allow for success.”
Is there a secret to AIW’s longevity?
“We have some products that we have come up with in the past few years, but most of our products are at least 10 years old,” Bonde said. “We have grown in telecommunications. We are getting into power and signal cables.”
The success of Teknor Apex and AIW has been made possible largely through the companies’ ability to react to markets that have changed constantly throughout the 20th Century.
Fain doesn’t make excuses. He has seen suppliers go south. And customers close. But Teknor Apex has pressed on. The company, he said, finds opportunities in change. In the 1940s and 1950s, for example, as many as 300 shoe manufacturers operated in New England. Teknor Apex did business with many of them.
“They’ve all moved overseas, where the leather and labor is cheaper,” Fain said.
But Teknor Apex didn’t follow an exodus out of Rhode Island.
Teknor Apex dug deeper. Researched more. Got creative.
For example, long ago the company capitalized on the expertise it developed while making rubber for shoes, developing a surface for cutting. The result was a cutting board. So when the shoe business began to disappear, Teknor Apex began selling traditional cutting boards to restaurant supply warehouses. They remain a strong seller – 40 years later. In fact, the cutting boards – called Sani-tuff – were written up this August in The New York Times. Columnist Amanda Hesser wrote in part; “As you cut on it, the surface gives, making it easier on your arms as well as your knife blade. But it is hard and rough enough to grab hold of the blade so that food does not slide around, as it does on plastic cutting boards.”
The cutting boards opened the doors to the restaurant business, where Teknor Apex is the largest manufacturer in America of industrial rubber floor mats.
“We are always looking to diversify our products,” Fain said.
The company traces its origins to a tire recapping business started in Providence in 1924. The Apex Tire store, located at the corner of Westminster and Knight Streets, was moved to Central Avenue – the day after the Hurricane of 1938 flooded out the storefront in Providence.
By 1945 the company had moved from recapping to the production of tread rubber compounds for sale to recappers, a business active within Teknor Apex to this day. It was in 1947 that Teknor Apex ventured into soling materials for shoes. Plastic compounds followed.
As a result of its growth in plastics, the company is a major producer of garden hose.
Both Bonde and Fain point out that old fashioned does not mean out of touch.
“We spend a whole lot more money on education and training for our people,” Fain said. “Now our machine operators are computer operators – they never had to be before.”
The companies have earned the admiration of Pawtucket Mayor James E. Doyle. .
“What impresses me most about them is that they are very active participants in the city,” Doyle said.
In a city that has not been spared company closings in recent years, Doyle sees Teknor Apex and AIW as examples that success is possible.
“These two companies are shining examples of what can happen with good management,” Doyle said.
Ask Fain what is in store for the next 75 years and he just smiles. Fain is not sure where the Teknor Apex products will take him.
He is the president of a Rhode Island manufacturer and he is thinking positive. He is not about excuses – or blame.
He doesn’t even take the bait if you ask whether the General Assembly should be doing more to help the state’s manufacturers. It’s a common lament – one that’s bound to get him charged up, to get him to fire away at the powers that be. But Fain just doesn’t bite.
“We don’t wait for them to argue,” he said. “We have to move faster than a legislature is designed to move.”
No spoiling this birthday party.
