Manufacturing
Seizing an opportunity
How Doug Hartley has achieved growth at Portage Precision Polymers Inc. by following his gut
By Abby Cymerman
Smart Business Akron/Canton | December 2007
It can be lonely at the top, but reaching
out to other leaders by joining industry groups and leadership organizations can help lessen the burden of decision-making, says Doug Hartley.
“You may think you should handle
something this way or that way, and then
you come to a meeting, put your problems out on that table and flesh them
out,” says the president and CEO of
Portage Precision Polymers Inc.
“It’s like having a board of directors.”
Hartley, along with three other
stockholders, founded Ravenna-based Portage Precision more
than five years ago. Today, the
60-employee company sells synthetic and natural rubber polymers to the mechanical, architectural and construction industries, and revenue hit $18.1 million last year, up from $12.5 million in 2004.
Smart Business spoke with
Hartley about how he achieved
that growth by taking risks and
following his gut.
Q: How do you learn to recognize
good business opportunities?
Find out what customer
requirements are, and provide
service and quality that the
larger companies are failing to
do.
Everybody has various opportunities that come across
their desk or in person. The
people who take advantage of opportunities and don’t let them pass by are
the ones in life who are successful.
When opportunities come your way, you
need to do something about it, or somebody else will. If I wouldn’t have done
what I did, somebody else would have,
eventually.
In the beginning, a lot of businesses are
all about risk-taking. When I don’t follow
my gut and don’t do things according to
the way I feel deep inside, nine times out
of 10, I kick myself later because I was
wrong. You make mistakes in business
and in life, but you need to learn from
those mistakes.
We’re a private company, and my employees need to know when things are good,
and they need to know when things are not
good, so we’re all on the same page.
Q: How do you communicate your strategic
plan to your employees?
We share information with our employees every month that many companies do
not, like financial information and customer information. For years, I worked for
people who really kept a lot of that stuff
close to their vest, and I saw where it actually hurt people.
Q: How does sharing this information
benefit your company?
The rumor mill doesn’t go very far here. I
think a problem a lot of companies have is
not so much market forces but imploding
from within. You need to treat your
employees just like your customers. They
need to know what’s going on in order to
be positive and hardworking.
Attitude is everything. If you get up and
have a good attitude coming into work,
you’re going to do a good job all day. If your
attitude’s bad, you’re not going to do a
good job. That’s how life works.
Q: How do you make sure you’re making
smart decisions?
I work with my management team. I may
have a particular direction in mind, but we
bring all the pros and all the cons
out on the table, discuss it and
think about it. Whatever the consensus is, that’s usually the way we
go. I look at my management team
as my advisers in their various
areas.
I don’t believe in dictatorships
and management by threats; my
position is as the head coach. There
are football teams where the head
coach is screaming, yelling and
kicking at them all the time. And
then there are the coaches who really listen and work hard with the rest
of their coaching staff; those seem to
be the ones that are more successful.
Business and sports mirror each
other quite a bit, and you need to run
a business a lot like a successful
sports team.
Q: What things are critical to the
growth of a company?
You have to know your market very
well. In my particular business, [the]
raw materials we use are derivatives
of oil, so if there’s a major situation
with oil — and that’s something we’ve
had to manage the last few years — it
certainly affects us. Knowing that market
can add to our profitability or take away
from it, if it’s not managed properly.
You also have to stay in touch with your
employees and everybody who’s working
with you. The more a company grows, the
harder that becomes. Once you get to a certain point, a good human resource department is very helpful. We hired a human
resource manager last year in order to
serve our employees well.
HOW TO REACH: Portage Precision Polymers Inc., (330) 296-6327 or www.pppmixing.com
