Consulting with small manufacturers has been my greatest business pleasure. My clients appreciate what I bring to their market visibility. When it was on the radar for Georgia Pacific Nonwovens Group to relocate me or make major changes, I made new moves.  I relate some of those times in my Amazon ebook, 14 Dinners and A Lunch. 

The small business clients I developed were not marketers. They did not write news releases. They were quiet contract manufacturers who often made products for big brand partners. 

One potential client told me they were “busy enough.”

I told them, “You still should project an image of being an advanced manufacturing supplier to keep your customers satisfied for the future.” I did their first web site, wrote news releases, helped them find more prospects. As the years went by, this customer allowed me to use their offices at times and had a mail slot with my name since I was working from home. I brought them vegetables from the garden; they gave me cartons of wipers. 

Wisconsin is a top employer in the world of manufacturing. Having worked with medical disposable products for many years, I could contribute to several companies who make wet wipes and dry wipers, masks, printed packaging and more.

One year, I formed a group and some of my clients became my “advisory board.” At a meal in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one day, with about five male clients, I kidded, “I wish I could have a little dog in a satchel to accompany me like Paris Hilton does.”

“No problem, Susan,” they said. This is how great these clients were, who ran relatively small enterprises. Later, they were my rock when I initiated a “Converters Expo” held at Lambeau Stadium.

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P&G, one of the Big Guys

I figured the statute of limitations was beyond me, so I wrote a chapter about Procter & Gamble, having spent a lot of years visiting. In the early 80s, J&J and K-C dominated the market for sanitary napkin pads. P&G decided it was a market where they could successfully compete.

My company supplied the peel-off strips applied to the pads. We applied silicone to one side and printed their logo on the other side. Without the silicone coating and adhesive compatibility, the strip would not release. When we were in start-up mode with P&G, we had to carefully segregate the production and packaged pallets from each other. We could not afford to have anyone see the materials, aside from those at the machine and packaging departments.

Buyers at P&G came and went quickly, often on to other endeavors in the company, and we found that they often had different agendas to adapt. However, to our credit, we trained many buyers about the products they were buying, and we had to handle certain difficult requests. Along with my female colleague in customer service, we developed a spread sheet for a key buyer showing the upcoming needs for his factories, with whom I was in contact. He loved that.

Sometimes our communications were more valued than others they received from their own counterparts. We developed a summary showing all the products shipping to every P&G location around the world and shared it with all of them, also showing the status of new items under development. It was useful to them and helped us to qualify faster at new locations.

Years Offer Surprises

As I say in the book, you are bound to have challenges and surprises along your journey. Just one example I relate surprised me, but the scientist never knew. As I told my friend after a trip out east. “Discussing the development of our components for transdermal patches is not easy, especially since my technical partner has transferred. I feel somewhat inadequate.”

“What happened,” she asked. “Did you embarrass yourself?”
“Well, no.  I was saved by my reading during the flight.”
“Was it a tech paper you were reading?”

“Not exactly, it was just a page-turner,” I said. “But let me tell you about the meeting first…It was at the big drug company Ciba Geigy. As you know, I rarely visit buyers, but rather, product developers, and in this case, a scientist. He was working on putting a drug into the patch. I figured he knew about pills and shots, but these patches were new. Our component was the peel-off backing with a silicone coating that must be compatible with adhesives and allow the drug to pass through to the skin….

“I’m escorted into his lab, and the scientist says this to me:”
“”So, you know what the NDAs are, don’t you?’”
“I reply, yes, the New Drug Applications and said a little more.

“And he asks me, ‘And what about the ANDAs? I look at this tall egghead and say, the Amended New Drug Applications blah, blah. It appeared I had turned the corner, not being too stupid in his eyes, so we went on to discuss how these transdermal patches were constructed and how I could now bring help to his work.”

“Well, what is the good part?” asked my friend.

“I left. I got into my rental car back to the Newark Airport thinking to myself: That smart scientist would have fallen off of his lab stool if he knew that every answer about the NDAs, I learned three hours ago while reading Arthur Hailey’s page-turner book about a female drug rep. in the paperback, ‘Strong Medicine’. 

With more than 25 years experience working and consulting in the nonwovens, wipes and paper industries, Susan Stansburgy has served as a writer and consultant for a number of companies. Additionally, she founded the Converter’s Expo at Lembeau Field Atrium. 14 Dinners and a Lunch is available on Kindle through Amazon.com.