Profit In Plastics

Tymex Plastics, our tenant at 5300 Harvard Road.

Tymex Plastics turns post-production scrap into useable plastics products.
Issue Date: December 2006, Posted On: 11/27/2006

It isn’t often the American dream turns into reality. But for three men who started Tymex Plastics, it did. And reality is better than the dream ever could have been.

When self-proclaimed “working-class guys” Michael Turkovich, Mark Simonitis and Eric Yarabenetz were employed at a plastics company in 2000, they didn’t like the way things were going with the company or the ownership. So, they developed a business plan of their own for a post industrial plastics-processing center.

Simonitis, vice president of the Cuyahoga Heights-based company, began making sales calls out of his basement in January 2001. Five months later, the company made its first sale.

And the sales just kept coming from there. From 2004 to 2005, Tymex Plastics saw an 89 percent sales growth, thanks in part to Yarabenetz, vice president of sales. During that same time period, employee levels grew from 16 to 28 workers. And from 2001 to 2005, Tymex has seen a 1,456 percent sales growth and a 367 percent employee growth.

Tymex solicits manufacturers of plastic products to turn their post production scrap into various forms of reusable plastic. “We don’t go to landfills,” Turkovich explains. “We use nothing but post production scrap.”

One of the unique aspects of Tymex is that it provides its own trailers for the companies to use to dispose of the scrap. Once full, the manufacturer calls Tymex to remove the trailer and replace it with an empty one.

“They don’t want to take up space with scrap,” Turkovich says. “With the trailer, it’s not getting mixed up. It’s off the floor. And once the trailer is full, we pick it up. It’s huge for our customers.”

Once collected, the plastic is separated and classified. It is then grinded down into flakes and turned into pellets. The pellets may be pulverized into powder. Tymex then sells the plastic materials. It also brokers material by finding companies with extra surplus, buying it and reselling it.

The recipe for success was simple, even if the work that went into it wasn’t.

“We each have something unique to bring to the table,” says Turkovich, president of the company. “Being a smaller company and being three guys  — working-class guys — we tend to make decisions quickly. We’re nimble and can make changes on the fly. We’re not afraid to try anything. It might not be the most logical step to make, but we don’t know that until we try.”

Although all of the work is done in Cuyahoga Heights, Tymex reaches as far south as North Carolina, as far west as Wisconsin and as far east as New York. Tymex also exports overseas.

Although they knew Tymex would be a success, the trio didn’t realize it would happen so quickly.

“I thought it would take longer,” Turkovich says. “We started and then 9/11 happened. It just about killed us, but we prevailed by talking to our vendors, suppliers and paying our bills. All of us put our personal lives on hold. It took lots of hours, lots of commitments.”

–CM

Media Source: http://www.inside-business.com

 

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