PACKED WITH CARE

Buy an appliance, toy or computer part and most of the time you have to grapple your way through a load of packing materials - cardboard, polyurethane, polyethylene Styrofoam, neoprene or plastic - to find the product.

Few people appreciate packing materials. They view them as annoyances, obstacles, stuff to throw away. Not Industrial Rubber & Supply. This company sees packaging as an engineering achievement, a work of industrial art.

Hard to believe? Next time you buy an expensive gadget, consider that your purchase might have been knocked off a loading dock or warehouse shelf, or dropped eight feet during shipping, and the only thing ensuring its safety is the quality of the packaging. If it's an expensive or breakable item like a computer monitor, chances are the packaging had to be drop-tested in an independent lab, with certification that it will protect the product from damage. "Providing quality packaging is tricky and complex," said Frank Albanese, vice president of sales and marketing for Industrial Rubber & Supply. "So much so," he said, "that some universities now offer degrees in packaging engineering. Designers are concerned not only with product protection, but weight, flammability, size and cost." Industrial Rubber & Supply was founded in 1946, with a home office in Tacoma. For the past 26 years, IR&S has operated a facility at the Spokane Industrial Park. Several weeks ago, however, it moved its local plant to the Broadway Industrial Park, 4020 E. Broadway. Ralph Smalling began at IR&S as a distributor of rubber products - footwear and hoses - manufactured by General Tire. In 1951, the company heard about a new product called foam rubber and quickly contracted to become the first Northwest distributor. Huge "buns" of the material arrived by railcar, then were customized and sold for use in bed mattresses and seat cushions. Later, the material was used for packaging. Today, those product lines have been divided into two distinct IR&S divisions. I/R Speciality Foam and Packaging focuses on specialized packaging. The second division, Carl Havens Signature Fabrics, provides a full line of products and services to the upholstery industry - fabrics, vinyls, cushioning, supplies and tools. The company's new, 24,000-square-foot Spokane facility houses both divisions and 12 employees. If all goes as planned, IR&S hopes to expand its staff by about a third in the next 12 to 24 months. Albanese attributes the company's success to its willingness to stay ahead of major trends. "We are constantly trying to change with the market and improvements in technology," he said. Albanese pointed to a fully staffed design department, armed with computer-aided design/CAD-14 software and equipment. "Our customers often come to us with some very obscure designs and sketches, then look to us to create formal designs, production schedules and prototypes for testing. We have become a full-service provider and can take a client's ideas from a napkin drawing to a finished product," he said. Rob Robinson, a production manager in the sewing division at Multifab Inc. in Spokane, agrees. "Their customer service people are very good to work with," he said. "We have a lot of unique requests and projects that we need help with and they go out of their way to meet our needs." Similarly, Larry Johnson, an engineer with an electrical wiring manufacturer, said IR&S not only meets his company's customized needs, but provides materials on short turnarounds. To expand market share, IR&S is launching two sales efforts. The first features a twist to a traditional approach, in which a sales meeting is set up with major prospective clients. Instead of a simple meeting with a sales representative, however, IR&S is sending four people to each meeting - a department head from production/estimating, a designer, the field representative and Albanese. The strategy is designed to help clients envision the full-service capabilities. "People often have a mistaken perception, thinking the company's services are only as big as the sales representative capabilities," said Albanese. "In our case, nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that once a client sees our full depth and capabilities, they will choose us as their supplier." The second tier of the new marketing approach taps into opportunities on the Internet, as the company is developing a site to sell products and inform customers.

Copyright 1999 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.