Don Romine, President And CEO Of Web Industries In Marlborough
Rick Saia
Don Romine, president and CEO, Web Industries, Marlborough
Web Industries has been in business for more than 40 years, and Don Romine has been with the company for most of that span, now as its president and CEO. Web, which provides manufacturing services, is headquartered in Marlborough and has a manufacturing facility in Holliston, as well as in four other cities around the United States. In January, the company acquired CAD Cut Inc., of Middlesex, Vt., which provides fabric cutting and kitting services for the aerospace, medical, and industrial fabrics markets.
How does your company fit into the manufacturing services sphere? Where do your customers find Web Industries most useful?
Our value to a company is in what we know about working with flexible materials and how we use that knowledge to benefit our customers' products. Our core business is flexible material converting and end-product contract manufacturing. So that expertise about how to process flexible materials is at the core of what we do.
Your recent acquisition of CAD Cut seems to better position you for the next several years. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely. There are reasons for purchasing CAD Cut; great people, great capabilities, great customers, a good employee culture … all made for a great fit for Web Industries. Adding CAD Cut's capabilities and knowledge base to our portfolio of services and solutions is a natural extension to our aerospace-grade composite formatting processes. So CAD Cut does some different things in the same industry with the same materials we're already familiar with.
You're a 100-percent ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) company, which is certainly unique in the business world. Does that enhance the level of engagement among your employees?
It does if you decide to enhance the level of engagement. Our company became an ESOP in '85. The reasons we became an ESOP I think are the right ones. It wasn't a corporate bailout looking for concessions from employees, like some of the bad press you read. Ours was because the founder (Bob Fulton) believed and felt the people who created the enterprise value should have an opportunity to share in it.
And does it boost the longevity among your employee base?
Absolutely. There have been several studies done on employee-owned companies over the years. Newer studies corroborate the evidence that if you have an employee-owned company, just the linkage of the fact that the employees have a stake in the profitability of the company helps enhance performance in the single-digit percentiles of productivity, maybe 3, 4 or 5 percent. But if you combine engagement, employee involvement and participation, if you treat your people like owners, if you help them understand they have an employment earning cap (and) an equity-earning cap, which most employees never think about, and you find ways to engage them in improving their work, they're very motivated to do so. And then you see gains of 10 to 15 percent and you see a competitive edge that is very difficult to beat.
Recent reports tell us we're seeing a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. Do you see that as well?
I believe there is (such) a move because there are a lot of hidden costs (manufacturing in other countries) … there are a lot of elongated supply chain costs. We recently saw an issue with a longshoremen's strike that was affecting shipments to Europe. So all the issues of hidden costs — other than the price you pay for the services — I think there's a strong case for bringing business back to America.
Your business model depends on being as operationally nimble as possible. How do you maintain that to deliver as quickly as possible for your customers?
It really speaks to our market engagement strategy. What we provide to our customers is the ability to get to market quicker. If you've got a product idea, an IP concept that involves flexible materials, you need to design and develop a way to get that idea from a laboratory to a saleable product. That's where we come in in terms of speed to market. The next phase is rapid launch. A lot of large companies can't move nimbly enough to be making product at saleable volumes. We'll do that in six months very often.
______________
This interview was conducted and edited for length by Rick Saia, Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer
Read more
Marlborough Firm Acquires Vt. Company
The Experts Behind The Stretchers: Q&A With Steve DiOrio Of Vital EMS
After Sale, BJ's Sticking With Proven Strategy
For Staples, Rivals’ Merger Highlights Office-Supply Market’s Shift To Web
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments