Selling the Ingredient No One Sees: Reframing Polypropylene as Sustainability Plus OneSelling the Ingredient No One Sees: Reframing Polypropylene as Sustainability Plus One

Selling the Ingredient No One Sees: Reframing Polypropylene as Sustainability Plus One Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White. Joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: Jeff, I am ready for today’s show. I think it’s gonna be an awesome one.

Jeff White: I think it’s, it’s, this is interesting.

Carman Pirie: Well, just, you know, like there are some challenges that like this notion of, you sell a thing that’s in another thing, like the notion of ingredient brands, like, and how do you, you know, h- even I think sometimes for people that are in those little mini sectors and categories, in some ways they, you know, and now make sense to them.

But especially for newer marketers or new team members or whatever, it can be a really interesting kind of like dog watching TV moment. “Huh, how do I work in that?”

Jeff White: And I, I think a lot of people outside this industry don’t necessarily understand that, things are assembled from other places. Like, there’s lots of manufacturers who make stuff that only goes into something else. It’s never an end product on its own. And, it requires a very unique understanding of the dynamics of, manufacturing writ large, and, uh, certainly takes a, a special approach when it comes to marketing and sales.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Jeff White: Yeah, me too. So joining us today is Chris Persson. Chris is the vice president of sales and marketing at Drake Extrusion. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Chris.

Chris Persson: Hey guys, thanks for having me today.

Carman Pirie: Chris, it is wonderful to have you on the show. I’d love to know more about Drake Extrusion for our, uh, listeners. So maybe, give a bit of a corporate introduction, if you will.

Chris Persson: Yeah, absolutely. Drake Extrusion is a company. We’re located here in Ridgeway, Virginia. If you don’t know where Ridgeway, Virginia is for all your NASCAR fans out there, I know you guys are a Canadian show that there may not be a lot of NASCAR, but we are actually right next to the Martinsville Speedway in Virginia.

We’re right across from the North Carolina line. This, this community is rich in history of, textiles and furniture, some really legacy, um, type of, of, industries in this, in this region of the country. But Drake Extrusion, we’ve been here 31 years. It was a greenfield, site 31 years ago.

It was actually a, a British company. It has since changed hands. Our parent company is a, a Swedish company called Durock. Uh, but we have about 180 employees, here in, uh, in Virginia. We have basically two sites that are kind of next door to each other. But we, we, extrude polypropylene at, at scale.

We, we do what you call, staple fiber. We-we’ll probably talk a little bit more about what that is, but goes into a lot of different end uses in the automotive space, geotextile space. We also do, filament polypropylene. Filament polypropylene is used you may not know this, but used in a lot of upholstery.

So your couches, bedding, flooring, things like that, and we’re also used in a lot of, um, type of technical applications. And then we have another business where we actually mechanically, uh, alter different yarns, not only polypropylene, but nylon and polyester. So one of the reasons I was attracted to Drake Extrusion, I’ve been with them about a, a year, a little over a year now.

But, a little bit segue into my background. I’ve, I’ve been in this industry for 21 years. Um, I have a background and I studied mechanical engineering. Knew nothing about textiles, and this section of the country actually has a lot of textiles. Used to have much, much more. But, companies would often hire mechanical engineers, bring them in, and see who’s gonna make it.

And, I was one of those few that, that made it through. And so I went through all the different divisions of QA, R&D, started going out on the road with, the sales guys, and they’d all look at me and be like, “You explain this new technology.” And I started– I– Well, one of the reasons being an engineering background you always think marketing guys, like they’re the flashy guys with the nice hair, fast car, you aspire to be that guy, right?

But, but one thing in this industry, it’s like, I think when you’re talking to manufacturers, they really wanna know the technical pieces of it. And so I think my engineering background helped me make that, that jump. You know, I went back to school at night to get my MBA, so that helped sharpen my chops.

And then I– A certain part of my career, I worked with some mar- some people that were from marketing professions at P&G and, you know, that, that group really knew how to tell a story and I really gleaned a lot from that, that experience in my career.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, that’s true. You’re in the d-d-division of pros there for sure. I mean, the PNG is often referred to across categories.

Jeff White: What was it that drew you to the marketing side from the mechanical engineering? Was it just that we’re all so good-looking and suave on this end?

Chris Persson: Right, right. I, I wanted to be that– I wanted to be in the mix, you know. I wanted, um… But, I think the thing I love, I love process, but I also love, I heard you guys talk about CRMs and stuff on this show and when you look at a CRM system, it’s often like a flow, flowchart, right?

Of, of like how you’re gonna, how you’re gonna approach the customer. You know, generally speaking, our, our sales process is get it– meeting somebody. The, the thing that people told me is like, “You know, Chris, you have this engineer, education.” I wouldn’t call myself the best engineer, but it’s like, you can talk to people and you’re okay with talking, you’re comfortable, you can tell the story.

And I think, I think to me I’ve heard this, I know it’s off-topic, but it’s like if we’re all worried about AI right now, and I heard, I heard, I heard a podcast, one guy talk about w-what should you teach your kids, you know? If AI’s gonna come, you know. He’s like, “You know, I get my kids to actually record a podcast because when you make a podcast, you have to tell a story, right?

You have to have a plan.” And I think as long as you can communicate a story, AI is never gonna replace that. And so that does attract me to marketing ’cause I think it’s all about telling a story.

Carman Pirie: That’s good because I was really worried that I was gonna have to get better hair.

Chris Persson: No, no, Carman, it’s, it’s there.

Carman Pirie: I do have a f- I do have a reasonably fast car, to be fair, but the hair is pretty, pretty, pretty

Jeff White: Doing better than mine, sir.

Chris Persson: See, we’re, we’re not, we’re not on, um… There’s– It’s, it’s all audio though, so nobody knows.

Carman Pirie: Exactly.

Jeff White: No one has to see Carmen and I.

Chris Persson: Guys can be whoever you want.

Jeff White: Yeah. Mom says…

Carman Pirie: With a name like mine and a face that’s all over the internet, I don’t– I can’t be anybody I wanna be, you know, Chris, honestly. People would find me pretty darn quick. But, th-this is a– I guess in your space is and in the applications that you’re selling into, is the use of polypropylene in those applications incredibly common or is– are you encountering scenarios where you’re introducing the use of polypropylene into applications that maybe people would typically think of as maybe weighing on some other, uh, a- other material that would be better or in their mind maybe, uh, just more established or something as a use case?

Chris Persson: Right. So you kind of have to, um… There’s a little bit of a history lesson here. So y- to me, part of that is I love history too, but I think you always have to understand how, how did we get here in this market? And so, polypropylene, is a little bit of delving into the petrochemical complex, but polypropylene, when you produce gasoline, the actual byproduct is a thing called propylene, and propylene is the basis of polypropylene.

So a lot of these guys like Amoco and Chevron, back in the ’50s and ’60s, they were creating all this propylene and they were kind of… They’re like, “What should we do with this?” So they developed the plastic polypropylene. And so a lot of these guys it was all about back in that day, it was like it was super cheap, so people found a way to put it into cars, to multiple applications.

Fast-forward, 25, 30 years later, and then polyester starts to take over. China builds huge overcapacity of making the intermediates for making polyester, um, and things like nylon. So polypropylene starts to fade from popularity in certain applications because of price points.

So polyester becomes its huge competitor. But there are, things about polypropylene that it can’t be replaced by any other thermoplastic. So I think, I think that’s to answer your question is so a lot of people, you know, as, as we give from the baby boomers that were in some of these supply chain spots to people that are new, we have this chance to re-educate people, and we think that, polypropylene has this position where, one, if you’re looking for certain, certain attributes, you can’t replace it with polyester, you can’t replace it with nylon.

Those are its big competitors. Um, but we’re also now, tell- telling the story of sustainability, um, because polypropylene, a lot of buyers, they have their folks within their organizations that they may have a chief sustainability officer. So if you look at an automobile, for example, inside that automobile, the highest amount of plastic is actually polypropylene.

So one of the things like, your General Motors, Chryslers of the world, they probably have this chief sustainability officer and say, “Hey, how can we lower the greenhouse gas score of this automobile?” Just by replacing some polyester with polypropylene, in certain applications, you may be able to just go ahead and take that greenhouse gas score down on your automobile.

So these are the thing– kind of things that aren’t intuitive to people that have been in this space for a long time, but let’s, let’s try to change the conversation to, “Hey, this is the right fiber for your application. Also, it’s got a, it’s got a greener story, and, it’s not all about price,” because we’re not gonna win on price, but we will win on performance and maybe sustainability in certain applications.

Carman Pirie: Hmm

Jeff White: I’d like to explore that a little bit further because I think it, it’s interesting to consider. You mentioned that there are some use cases for which polypropylene cannot be matched by any other fiber, so it doesn’t have an alternative. So how do you talk about it for those applications versus the ones where you’re competing with a more established type of, material like polyester?

Chris Persson: Yeah, that’s been the big challenge, right? One of the– so we– I mean, we’re doing a lot of kind of guerrilla warfare type of marketing. You know, we don’t have a, a huge budget. I mean, one of the things we’re trying to do is, I joke with my team, we need to show up places where, where people aren’t expecting us to be, slap backs and give drinks to everybody.

But, all joking aside, like, where do we go into these places where we know we’ve lost market share to polyester or nylon and start to have those discussions, like, things like being on this show, to talk to people that might hear it. But it’s, it’s also the point of, when you start, um, to talk to people, A, that we have this product and we often get invited in front of their, basically their buyers.

And the other big thing that you have to do is you have to talk to the technical people. So I think my engineering background, and then you’re often talking to design engineers, when they start to see when you have a clear, uh, kind of presentation, and we’ve worked on this story with our marketing group, is how do we tell the story of low specific gravity?

How do we tell the story of cleanability? How do we tell the story of fastest wicking fiber? So we’re starting to create that content and we’re doing things on LinkedIn a Did You Know series where we’re doing videos and, and little, little casts where we talk about those applications with our sales force.

And then that gets people calling us and asking us to come talk to them about it. So it’s really just been kind of organic, but we’re trying to be more deliberate about the message that we’re telling about polypropylene.

Carman Pirie: Chris, one of the questions I had, have been holding here is this idea of like, it seems to me, and I’m trying not to be too biased in some of the flexible packaging work that we’ve done and things of that sort. Having worked in that space is right in the sweet spot of plastics and sustainability.

It’s like that’s right there. And it’s one of the, one of the, I guess, kind of challenges I’ve noticed in that space is sometimes greener doesn’t beat green, i.e. doesn’t beat lower price.

Chris Persson: Mhm, mhm.

Carman Pirie: Because in some categories, the end users care more about price than they do sustainability. So you have someone in the middle that’s the actual buyer that’s like, “Yeah, like we have a chief sustainability officer and we’re putting out a ESG report every year, but, um, we also know that the end user is so price sensitive that we can’t go there.”

But I can kind of… I was thinking in this instance because where it’s an ingredient to another thing, like do you run into that kind of an objection where you have to sell people on the idea that it’s a good idea to do good from an environmental perspective?

Chris Persson: Absolutely. I mean, I spent– you hit the nail on the head. Everybody wants to be green until they see the price tag, right? The challenge that I see, and I learned… So, so Drake doesn’t– we don’t do a lot in apparel. We do a little bit.

But when you– I spent most of my career, um, with- in the apparel side. So you’re talking to people like Nike, Under Armour, Lululemon. These type of folks are definitely have that sustainability pitch, right? And so in the apparel, even though it’s a low margin market, you’d be amazed that people wanna try to be sustainable.

When you move more into the industrial type of, of applications that Drake participates in, yeah, you get if it’s sustainable, it’s recycled, it, it should be cheaper, right? ’Cause you’re taking waste and then you’re so it should be cheaper. So, but the problem with that is if you’re using a byproduct, if we’re ta- we do do recycled polypropylene too, but if you do that, it takes a lot more processing to that material, so it’s a lot more expensive to run it.

So that story is harder to tell. So you really have to focus on the, the, the price points where your market is, and then be able to– we have several different ways that we can tell sustainability. That part that I told you about it being a lower greenhouse gas just from a virgin material, people may not have known that, right?

So you gotta make sure they understand those studies. The other part is we work with a company called, uh, Pure Cycle. They’re a spinoff of P&G. But basically, they are having a difficult time because it’s, it, it is a premium to run their product. One of the things that we’re going around is like Europe we know is going down the road of regulation around haste.

There has to be a certain amount of content that has to be recycled within this product. The other big thing that’s happen- happening, Carmen, is, is we haven’t– we, we talk about sustainability, but that’s changing into what they call circularity. So what that means for your audience is not only does it have to be you design something with recycled material or more sustainable material in it, but the, at the end of its life, it has to be recycled, and then when it goes on again, it has to have parts of its old self within its new self, so it’s completely circular.

And that’s something that’s that’s happening, probably faster in Europe, but it’s gonna come to the US too. Like we’re seeing it in carpets, and we’re seeing it in embedding too started to happen.

Carman Pirie: I always have to resist my natural inclination to tug conversations political every once in a while, having been a chief of staff to a member of parliament, you can’t get that out of your head, after s- after a while. But I do, i-in this instance, it’s like, you know, it’s really interesting to me and most of the work that we do as well is in the United States, so we share that, that, that similarity.

And, it seemed like the European and US market, uh, and North American market overall was in some ways, they were moving somewhat in parallel, just one was moving faster than the other. In more recent times, it seems like maybe that parallel piece isn’t quite as parallel as it used to be.

Maybe one person isn’t really moving that much at all right now and is taking a bit of a pause on this environmental conversation. I think that’s happened maybe a little bit politically, but it hasn’t happened so much with the businesses that actually make this stuff happen. So without leading the witness too much, I wonder how much you could give us about that.

Like what… Have you seen that kind of difference, uh, playing out on the sales side? Uh, uh, have you seen differences particularly out of the US market in terms of their embrace of sustainability messaging and how they’re thinking about it?

Chris Persson: No, I mean, I, I definitely think it’s taken a pause. Um, you know, I think there, there is, um, you know, especially in the automotive space, I think, you know, there was a lot of, uh, movement towards the EVs. Um, and then– And we had several projects ’cause polypropylene is such a lightweight type of material, so EVs were always trying to increase range, so they were trying to find any way to drop weight, and so polypropylene played well, um, in that space.

Um, so some of those have been put on the back burner per se. But I think the thing, we do look towards the EU, if you’re looking at a BMW and a, a Mercedes that are built here, they still have the– they have the overall EU mentality of we’re still going down that sustainability.

So it does– You, you have to pick your audience of where you’re going ’cause you, like, like you say, Carmen, you just have to know the reality of the space of the market you’re dealing with. But, um, I will also say, I do think for me it’s about, you know, there are still people that wanna, despite whatever’s going on in political life, they wanna do– they sus- you know, there’s emotion in that sustainability and people…

You– So you have to look for those brands and those companies that really wanna do this and align yourself with it

Jeff White: How much of the, kind of keeping with the bit of the political side, but how much of this is about furthering the regulatory environment and trying to push towards that circularity that you were speaking about? Are, are you in- at all involved in that or are– how are you leveraging that?

Chris Persson: Yeah. So this industry is fairly, it’s close-knit and there’s, like there was a large recycling conference in Charlotte, North Carolina about a month and a half ago. So you had people that like from our industry there, you had some like people like Target, there, some of the big brands, Nike was there, but they– it was probably more around traditional apparel, textiles, but we’re all in that sector.

But it’s all about how do we work together ’cause this is not a problem that’s gonna be solved by just Drake Extrusion or it’s really an industry-wide problem. Um, so there is a lot of I think there is a, a lot of discussions like we’re on a, a mattress recycling committee.

When you tear apart a mattress, there’s all kinds of things in it, right? That’s one of the big challenges. You got foam, you got springs, you got textiles, you got wood. So you’ve got all these things that, that have to be taken apart and divided and recycled. So, recycling within itself is just a huge industry and it’s very complex.

I think the thing at the end of the day is the economics of it, um, is trying to find a way that we could all make money and, and still do good. So that’s always been the challenge in this space. For Drake, it’s always been about sustainability plus one, you know.

The flip side of that is how do we have sustainability and on top of that, innovation. So that’s, that’s one thing that we’ve also really focused on too.

Carman Pirie: I think that notion of sustainability plus one is in some ways answered the question before I asked it, ’cause there was a… You know, you mentioned before about how the story can be hard to tell. Then you just stated about how, the recycling, uh, world is rather complex.

And, you know, speaking to this, similar thing, so I guess the, in some ways the way you’ve simplified or thought about telling that story is through that plus one mechanism in some way to help us. It’s not just about sustainability. I think there’s some interesting wisdom in that because it, it allow, is, it– Well, what you probably really mean is sustainability plus 10. When you say plus one, it doesn’t overwhelm the person listening to you. They’re like, “Okay, well, I’m wi- I’m willing to listen to Chris to hear one more thing.”

Chris Persson: I’ll, I’ll take that. I’ll take that.

Jeff White: I think that’s a differentiator too, because there’s an awful lot of people that will just simply say, “Yeah, it’s sustainable. That’s our message. It’s a sustainable product,” you know? And, uh, and leave it at that. And that makes it really hard to differentiate.

Carman Pirie: And then the total cost of ownership, trying to say that sustainability is about all of these things can, it can be a hard– Well, I, I guess having been hired to do just that, I, I think it’s a very difficult cohesive story to tell at scale.

Chris Persson: Yeah.

Carman Pirie: yeah.

Chris Persson: You guys talk to a lot of manufacturers, but, I talked about the P&G marketers. I think when you, when you come in, like a lot of folks, especially since manufacturing’s been put overseas, but when you’re manufacturing in the US and you’re competing against the conglomerates overseas, you have to have a pitch of, “Why am I still here?”

And, I think that Drake is still here because they have a really– we have a really interesting product portfolio. I equate it to, Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. If you could bring the customer here and you walk out on the floor and you see what we’re doing, the fact that we-we’ve developed 30,000 colors in polypropylene, the fact that we can do recycled polypropylene, we can put UV additives in it, we can put biodegradable in it.

There’s all these things your, your head just starts to kind of explode. But if you can put it in a way that say, “Hey, look,” to your point, Carman, it’s probably plus 10, plus 100. These are the– Not only could you do the sustainability as a base, but you can add all these things to it where it really gets the customer to start to, to think about the capability and the, the possibilities of the products they can make with you as a partner.

So that, that too is one of the things we’re trying to refine. How do we tell that story faster, as being a solutions provider?

Carman Pirie: Trying to think ’cause I, I, I feel like on one hand I’ve got another two hours of questions to pepper you with, and that’s not the, that’s not gonna do us very good at all for trying to …

Chris Persson: Are we gonna have a three, are we gonna have a three, three series just for Drake Extrusion?

Carman Pirie: I appreciate that you’re, that’s what you’re working through is how to tell that story, so I’m hesitant to just ask you for the solution then or what advice you would give to others. But if you have some advice as to how others may think about telling a complex story, I guess how have you started to at least think about addressing this challenge?

I underst- I appreciate that you’re working through it now, but if you step back from it, have you thought, “Okay, here are the guiding principles as we go through this.” Is there any, any advice you might share with listeners who might be m- moving through that same problem as, as they listen

Chris Persson: Yeah.

Carman Pirie: this?

Chris Persson: You can have every– there’s a lot of manufacturers that have equipment, but one of the things that I, I tell my folks here and it’s about the intellectual property. Like we– Drake has a lot of people that have year, decades of experience.

And I’m very lucky to have a team that when we walk in, we can sit with the customer and we can ask them questions and let them talk. We’re gonna, we’re gonna kinda guide, guide the pitch ’cause we do have that deck built out now and we have that story. But when we hear what they need we know how to take those five different areas that we’re really good at, and we can turn the knobs and we can know how to build it all together to create something special for them.

’Cause our, our competition is like, “Here’s our product list, here’s our price points. Take it or leave it,” kinda thing. You know? Where we’re gonna come in and say, “You know what? We hear what you need, and we suggest that you do this, this, and this, and we’ll run a small trial. We’ll go through you’ll try it out, it works, and then we’ve made a special product for you.”

So that, that– when I heard that feedback from customers, that to me was, that was the, that was the magic. We started to, to tell that story and we work with folks and we make special products. But my biggest challenge, is for our management team is, is how do we keep this going?

How do we keep the next generation behind us with these people that are gonna maybe retire in five to 10 years? And I know a lot of manufacturers are dealing with that now, is because, these industries used to be a lot bigger and that you get tons of people into them, but now it’s, it’s slimming down.

So our, our strength is really still in our IP. I find that’s a critical competitive advantage for us.

Carman Pirie: That’s really interesting advice, this notion of if you’re facing that kind of complexity challenge, in some way lean on the people that deal with the complexity every day and that are the experts in making that complexity actually deliver value to customers. They can be pretty key in, in, in helping, sort the fog away and, clear the air a little bit and, and reduce some of that confusion and complexity for prospects and customers.

That makes total sense.

Jeff White: It really does bring that innovation message to the fore. It’s almost like all of your plus one or plus 100s are fueled by innovation, by actually innovating your way towards a better future and, and greater solutions for your customers. That’s– you hear that a lot, but you don’t actually see it in action.

That’s cool.

Chris Persson: Yeah. No, it’s something that we spend a lot of time on, and it, it’s something that I tell my group is I just say, “Look, we’re, we are special. We, we d- we are different in this, in the way that we approach things, and we should take pride in that.” And I think that’s been a big buy-in in the last year

Carman Pirie: All right, Chris, we gotta wrap up this show. I want you to take out your crystal ball and tell us what’s going to be dramatically different 12 months from now than what you’re dealing with today. Like, what do you think is going to be the biggest change in the marketing sales landscape that you have to navigate.

Jeff White: First of all, the crystal ball is now made from polypropylene. So, so

Carman Pirie: So it’s, it’s, it’s a lighter ball.

Jeff White: A lighter ball, it’s more efficient, it uses less …

Carman Pirie: it’s recyclable. Yeah.

Chris Persson: The thing that, um, that we are focusing on the message, uh, to increase, increase the knowledge of polypropylene, educate people. That’s, that’s already in the works. You know, and it, it is– we are starting to see a lot more opportunities. We– I would say that the, the, the being in the US and with all the trade wars, with all the geopolitics, it has brought opportunity to us.

So I, I do predict, I don’t think any of that, unfortunately, is gonna end. Um, you know, so we, we have to continue to stay up to date with regulatory, with trade those type of things. I think the other thing that, that you would see is that we have a lot of things that, we’re really tied into things in real estate, and that market is still depressed.

I can’t do anything about what the Fed’s gonna do around interest rates. So we are moving into different end uses, so we’re spending an awful lot of time, going to filtration shows, uh, things that we’ve never been to, but we know that those markets are diversified out. So you’re gonna see our product portfolio grow.

I think that we really wanna put a ribbon on our sustainability story, so there’s gonna be a lot more effort about how to tell that story. We recently had a customer that, um, sells into Disney, and she had a, um, had an opportunity to go talk to Disney about sustainability around polypropylene.

So that forced us to give her, uh, a deck to sit in front of the folks at Disney. And so these type of things as we get opportunities, ’cause that just came out of an org-organic discussion about what are we doing around sustainability, and she’s like, “I love it. Put me something together that I can go. And Chris, I don’t want any numbers like you always talk about.

I just want, I want graphics.”

Carman Pirie: I’m thinking that just the, uh, notion of pulling together a presentation for Disney has to be at least a little bit of a nail-biter for somebody, ’cause they, they have an idea of how to deliver an experience. Yeah.

Chris Persson: Yeah, d- we definitely spent a lot of time on it, so there was a lot of back and forth.

Carman Pirie: Chris, very cool. Uh, really interesting insight. I very, very much enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for joining the show today.

Chris Persson: Oh, thanks so much guys for having me. Really enjoyed it.

Jeff White: Yeah, that was great. Thanks.