PBN Manufacturing Awards 2021
Publisher’s Choice Award for Innovative Adaptation: G-Form LLC
When public life and most commerce slammed shut in March 2020 because of COVID-19, the message for G-Form LLC, a manufacturer of athletic protective gear such as knee and elbow pads, was stark and unambiguous.
Team sports shut down overnight, orders stopped and it looked like the North Smithfield factory could go dark.
The first thought for CEO Glen Giovanucci and G-Form’s managers in Providence was how to keep the company’s 70 employees working and earning. The company came up with a plan to keep production rolling, while also serving the medical community, by making personal protective equipment. But G-Form’s options were limited, as it lacked the sewing capabilities needed for masks, and making hand sanitizer would have been problematic.
Giovanucci recalled seeing a TV news report in which a nurse was being interviewed. “She pulled her mask up onto her head and I could see the lines that the face mask had creased into her skin,” he said. “I thought, ‘We have to help these people.’ ”
The company decided to recalibrate its production methods, supply lines and customer base to make face shields. G-Form has made and sold about 2 million face shields since last April, Giovanucci said.
The work to retool the factory and to find supplies and customers moved quickly. An article by The Associated Press as early as April 17 described how G-Form was already making and shipping face shields.
Soon, the revised enterprise expanded to include five partner companies, all of them nearby manufacturers, logistics or supply-chain experts whose executives had heard about G-Form’s retrofit and offered to be part of the work. They included Atlantic Footcare, Ocean State Book Binding, The Beck Cos., VPI and Larsen.
Giovanucci said those companies approached G-Form offering workers and production space, hoping to keep more of their own people employed. The collaboration made higher levels of production possible, he said.
Giovanucci estimated that the face shield production ultimately saved 225 to 250 jobs across all the partner companies. “We contributed to helping them stay alive,” he said of the partner businesses.
Revising the company’s production from sports gear to face shields was not a snap. G-Form did not have supply chains in place for some needs, such as elastic and certain rivets. The company eventually developed a relationship with 3M as a source for plastic, but “we didn’t have experience with them; we were at the bottom of their list, and it was cash upfront” at first, Giovanucci said.
He said the company’s movement into making face shields did not create a financial windfall. “We offset what we would have done [in production and sales] in our normal protective gear business. We didn’t take advantage of the situation and jack up our prices. We maintained normal margins. Our motive was to keep going and to keep our employees working.”
Rob Kelley, G-Form’s vice president of global marketing, said once the decision was made to manufacture face shields, the staff had to jump into some unfamiliar terrain. “It took a lot of research; it was a quick study for all of us,” Kelley said. “It was an incredible team-building exercise.”
The most difficult piece was building a new supply chain for some materials, especially since some manufacturers of raw materials had shut down. “It was all hands on deck,” Kelley said. “We had to find labels for the face shields. We had people driving to printing plants and bringing labels back in their cars.”
Both Giovanucci and Kelley expect the company to return to its core business of protective sports equipment after the pandemic ends.
However, new relationships and developments have come about for the company because of its pivot in 2020. G-Form is working with Pyramid Manufacturing, a Rhode Island textile operation, to make heavy-duty gloves for industrial use. That development, Giovanucci said, could lead to more initiatives in creating protective gear for military, industrial and law enforcement needs.
“We look back on 2020 with pride,” Kelley said. “It really tested our resiliency.”
