Tim: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Surviving the Pride. I am your host, Tim.

Jourdyn: And I'm Jordan, and you might be.

Tim: Asking, what is Surviving the Pride? Well, Jordan, I would tell you Surviving the Pride is all about marketing, explaining all aspects of marketing to help a business grow, importance of having a website, SEO, social media. And we're also going to be talking about starting a business as well.

Jourdyn: Yeah, so in addition to that, we're also going to give you guys some helpful hints, tips, and tricks about current and upcoming trends within whatever industry our guest business is from and give you guys a bit of general information. In regards to that, I just want.

Tim: To give a brief rundown on some of the segments that we have planned for him during this podcast. One of them is titled technically the Hot Seat. Usually within this segment, we kind of just introduce the guests. We put them in the hot seat, asking them questions about customer experiences and how to deal with the branding that they have currently been doing with social media, and if they have anything that else that they would like to describe or say about their business. And then also near the end of it, we're going to be playing a little game with them, just called word association. Typically with that, each round entails for our guests to give us a phrase or words that first come to their mind based on our randomly generated word selection. And on today's episode, we have some gentlemen from the Polymer Center here in Charlotte, North Carolina. Guys, would you like to introduce yourselves in your role before we dive in?

Bill Murphy: I'm Bill Murphy, technical associate.

Phil Shoemaker: I'm Phil Shoemaker. I'm the director of the Polymer Center.

Tom McCall: I'm Tom McCall, the president of the Polymer's Technology Center.

Doug D. Simone: I'm Doug D. Simone. I'm the operations manager for the center.

Garrett Shimmer: I'm Garrett Shimmer. Carol Lab, manager of Polymers.

Jourdyn: All right, we're just going to dive in head first. So first segment is called the Hot seat. So basically it's our introductory segment where we basically have you guys introduce yourself, kind of like what you just did, but asking some questions. Ready? So first question would be, what's the role of the Polymer Technology Center?

Tom McCall: The Polymer Technology Center's role is to bridge the gap between development and production. We're there to help the customers who developed a product that there's a consumer need for it to go to the next step, to scale up and actually run volumes, truckload volumes, so they can take that next step. Okay, and then when did the business begin?

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah, the business itself actually didn't start until 1998, but it had a long history before that. It actually started off with Joe Bennett and a number of other people working together with Spe and SPI in Raleigh back in the late 1980s. When we were doing legislative receptions with SPI, it became real obvious to a person who was devoted to industry what is now called the Industry Expansion Solutions, or Ies. A gentleman by the name of Paul Cogle who would periodically make tours around the state looking at the plastics industry. It became obvious to him that the needs of the plastics industry wasn't really being served through the universities, that there was a need for training and so forth. So he got together with Joe Bennett, who was always an advocate for increased training and better dissemination of knowledge and started an effort to found an institution which later became the Polymer's Center of Excellence in 1998.

Jourdyn: Wow, that was really informative. I didn't know that at all, actually. So you guys founded, if I'm not mistaken, you said in the 1980s, 80s, yeah. So how has did you see any shift kind of in the mission statement from back then? Obviously it's like not too big of a big time difference, but from then to current date.

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah. Well, to found the institution you have to work with the state of North Carolina. We're a 501 not for profit. When you're a 501 C six, you have a mission that you get approved by the state. And ours is to support, maintain and encourage the strength and growth of plastics industry in the state of North Carolina. Charles Case, who is the attorney who set us up back in the early 90s, got all of that pushed through along with a gentleman named Lynn Reese who's still on our board and they ran the funding from the state and through NIST, through Ies. And at that point the mission was mainly to do educational activities. Over time we found that we could grow other aspects of our business compound developments, materials testing and so forth, which also serves the needs of the plastics industry. So yes, to answer your question, it does kind of evolve. But initially it was founded to be on the campus in the engineering department at Uncc and that worked terribly. Oh wow. Yeah, it required that we move across 85, find a new place and kind of start over again. In 2000 it was incorporated in 1998. So for only about two years, under the directorship of Bob Van Brett Road on UNCC's campus, they tried that mission but there was never any parking. And then every time they tried to turn on an extruder people were pulling fire alarms because they thought place was on fire. There was no good way to fund the activities that would later come to the Polymer Center. So it was decided at that point to move on and go across the street, essentially cross 85.

Bill Murphy: No hard feelings?

Phil Shoemaker: No, they just had to move, that's all.

Jourdyn: Yeah, okay, good.

Tom McCall: And then just coming off of that. What kind of products and services do you guys actually do there?

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah, well, there's four main activities that we underpay. The first one is training and we were just talking that's a moving target. There's always a need for training, but getting the word out what kind of classes we have, finding out who's interested in taking what, those are tough questions. And so you'll see if you're looking at our website, that's constantly evolving. The two things that aren't evolving are the testing center and the compound development that's been steadily increasing over the past 20 years. And that's where Euro and testing and Tom and Compound development have been exemplary in developing that business.

Jourdyn: Okay, so what would you say your customer base looks like?

Phil Shoemaker: We have over 500 customers, so it's usually somebody has something to do with the plastics industry, obviously, but we'll get things that are a bit bizarre. Euro can talk about some of his testing projects a little bit later that really go off into the woods. And right now, I would say the biggest driver for us is what we call advanced compounding. And Tom can address this better than I can, but everything we do is covered by an NDA. So we're not allowed to talk about a whole lot of these specific customers or specific projects with the customer. But what we can tell you is people come to us with all kinds of crazy ideas about what they want to make. Sometimes it's not even polymeric, sometimes it's something else. And we do, I think, a really good job in helping them develop their compound, telling them what kind of physical properties it has once it's developed, and then assisting them, as Bill Murphy will point out later, if we can't help them finding people in this industry who can.

Tom McCall: And to jump on to that, we help customers from the very top, from the Polymer producers, the manufacturers, all the way down to the entrepreneurs or startup companies. So we have that full gamut. Some of them don't have the equipment that we have. Some of them do, but the scale we have is perfect for them to do development run on what we call production equipment. But for them, that's development equipment. So what we would run on a 50 millimeter for some customers. That's how they scale up to their 100 millimeter. So they'll do development runs on our large machines, but then we have the startups that they don't have any equipment at all. They do the development work on the small equipment. And then if that's successful, which we've had a lot of success lately, then we move up to the large equipment. They're doing truckload volumes.

Jourdyn: All right, well, I think that concludes that first segment. Can you have any extra questions?

Tom McCall: I do have one. Looking at your website, you have a whole training tab about fundamental training, intermittent training, and advanced training. Do you want to touch a little bit on the training? Is that something you advance on each level or get past a certain thing?

Bill Murphy: Well, I think that the key right there is I have to say, in the last 18 months, we've probably been to twelve or more trade shows and conferences, and 50% or more of every lead we've gotten is for employee development or training. So that's where one of our big focus is at the present time.

Phil Shoemaker: But that is such a moving target. This is really painful for me because we've tried a number of different things with varying levels of success. Mainly failure.

Tom McCall: A lot of failures.

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah. Well, the problem is it's hard to everybody agrees that you need training. You've got this new workforce. Old guys like me are leaving the workforce, and new guys need to come in and take their place. That's clear somehow or the other. You have to transfer that knowledge, though, and that normally comes down to something called training. Well, okay, where are you going to go to get it? And there's been this interesting inversion of our training classes. Back in the 2000s, you could offer a class in basic injection molding or basic extrusion and would fill up. Now, all the plants have their own training classes in the plant. So their star extrusion guy might be the guy who leads the training classes. You no longer need an elementary class in extrusion, but their star training guy loves to come in and see a class on twin sprue extrusion technology. That class always fills up. So we've changed the model initially from a basic kind of class to a more advanced class. However, only a few of those classes have really struck a chord, really resonated within the industry. And I think part of that is people don't know about. So I know you guys are not extrusion or injection experts, but when you think about how you make a compound, you put stuff into an extruder, it mixes it all up and disperses it, and it spits it out into a little Pellets. Well, those steps putting stuff into the extruder, the extruder itself, and then pelletizing it, which what Tom does all day, every day, those three steps are really complicated, and they can drive you absolutely out of your mind. So Bill and I put our heads together, and we said, I know we'll do classes on how you put the stuff into the extruder with these things called feeders. Nobody signed up.

Bill Murphy: Thought it was a great idea.

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah, and I think it's still a good idea. You got to get the word out, though, and that's where we're failing. We did a Pelletizing.

Doug D. Simone: Class.

Phil Shoemaker: Now, that turned out really well because everybody hates Pelletizers. They're the most problematic piece of equipment.

Doug D. Simone: On an extrusion line.

Phil Shoemaker: They're forever breaking down. They're a bit delicate, and if you drop something in them, it completely destroys them. So people have learned that they really need to know more about them. That class filled up, but we also had a lot of marketing help. We did. So, to answer your question, training is not a simple subject to talk about, okay? It's it's one of our biggest headaches but I also think it's one of our biggest opportunities. We're struggling with it right now.

Jourdyn: All right, so second segment especially curated for you guys, just for you. It's called down to a Science because I know not a lot of listeners may understand what polymers exactly are. So basically, we're going to explain what it is. We're going to define what it is. We're going to see how this science benefits your company and how it can benefit some of your potential consumers. First question. Can someone define a polymer? Because I'm very confused.

Garrett Shimmer: It looks at me, I guess. Polymer is just a repeating unit of what's called a basic unit called a monomer. So monomer is just a clearly defined chemical structure that has a defined start and finish point, and a polymer just repeats that end to end, over and over again. And you don't know how long that chain is unless you do any kind of analytical experimentation on it.

Jourdyn: So it's like chemistry.

Tom McCall: Think of a polymer like a strand.

Garrett Shimmer: Of pasta, and if you cut the pasta down to an infinitesly thin slice, that's your monomer. And now you grown that polymer to the size of that pasta strand. And that's kind of like a basic model that you hear about, like in grade school or undergraduate science, like a basic model. And with polymers, you can have two different domains. You can have a crystalline domain where there's a unique unit cell structure where there's like a defined shape for that crystal. And then you have an amorphous type.

Doug D. Simone: Structure where the pasta strands are just.

Garrett Shimmer: Randomly distributed, convoluted, tangled up together. Think of like, curly hair like this. It's just everywhere, all knotted up.

Phil Shoemaker: It's not really defined.

Tom McCall: Now, if you have an amorphous mouth structure so just to jump on what he says, we talk about polymers. That's an amorphous polymer. You can see through it you wouldn't.

Doug D. Simone: Be able to see through the other day.

Tom McCall: And what's unique about Pet is it can be both amorphous and semicrystalline. So if you extrude this and melt it, it comes out clear if you cool it really quick in the morphe state. That's why you have a very bottle if you allow it to. If you don't cool it that quickly, will become opaque again in white.

Garrett Shimmer: Tom had a good example of that. So, like, Pet like a quiet link tripthalate. This is like a very common where you have both domains. Ideally, in most polymers, you're going to have both domains because there's no such thing as having like 100% pure crystal material. You'll have a crystal dominant or you'll have like, amorphous dominant. And whichever one is more dominant will be like a driving factor for a lot of physical properties, like stiffness or like a gas or liquid permeation or color haze, opacity. So the crystal structure, ultimately, there's this thing called the structure property relationship. And that's ultimately what drives a lot of the developmental work is you understand the structure, then you'll understand what the final output is that's coming out.

Jourdyn: That makes a lot of sense. I like the pasta analogy, thinly slice or something and being able to see like, that's a part of, like, a bigger chain. That was really good. Yeah, at first I was just like.

Doug D. Simone: Analogy coming up later. We use cake on our side.

Jourdyn: Oh, really?

Tom McCall: Use cake?

Bill Murphy: I use pasta.

Garrett Shimmer: See, I heart sponsor of Tony's Pizza University area.

Doug D. Simone: Shout out to Tony's pizza was sponsored by Tony's Pizza.

Phil Shoemaker: I wore their shirt. Does that matter?

Doug D. Simone: Oh, I guess not. Never mind. I want to tell Justin.

Garrett Shimmer: I'm going to get a picture.

Jourdyn: Next question. So what does a polymer engineer do?

Tom McCall: A polymer engineer? I guess that's me.

Garrett Shimmer: That's multifaceted, though, because you can kind of go both ways between the extrusion side and the testing side.

Tom McCall: But you're trying to improve the properties of a material, whether it's the strength, the elongation, the impact. But you're trying to add materials, whether they're additives, strengthening a glass. You may have to put modifiers into the bomber to to make the additives become more I'm not trying to say see, now we got to cut this.

Doug D. Simone: Sorry.

Garrett Shimmer: You want to talk about increasing the performance of a specific property. So, like antioxidant and impact modified.

Tom McCall: You're trying to put the right properties in the plastic for the ultimate parts. And that's really what you're always trying to do. Even that's what compounding is about, putting the right properties into the polymer.

Doug D. Simone: You know, carpets changed over the years. All these stain protection, wear protection, well.

Jourdyn: Carpet'S, plastic things I learned, part five.

Phil Shoemaker: Of this episode.

Doug D. Simone: 20% of this room is plastic. Most of your clothes are plastic. Eyeglasses cases, well, carpet is plastic. So over time, people found additives put in for stain resist and odor resistant, and you build that into that plastic. So you take something that's neat and then you add additives to it, like a cake. You put in something. You put in something that makes it taste different, makes it do different things. It's the same type of thing is what an engineer is trying to do with plastic. He's trying to modify it and make it better for what you need. Fire retardants, antimicrobials. You put in things. Unless you're wearing cotton, we're all wearing plastic.

Tom McCall: It's got to perform whatever the final application is. But one of the most important properties of plastics is the cost, and you got to make it to where it's economically feasible. You can do a lot of things in the laboratory. You can solve a lot of problems. But if it's not if you're not connecting that it's too expensive. No one's going to buy.

Doug D. Simone: You can build a house that won't burn down and nobody can afford it. Right?

Garrett Shimmer: I mean, what Tom said was probably the key thing that defines, like, a polymer engineer versus a scientist is that it's all about making something that is economically viable. The scientist is the one that's designing either a new polymer or a new additive. And Tom is taking those formulas or derivatives of those formulas and making it to something that's actually going to work. I would say that's the biggest key difference between somebody who's a lab scientist or bench scientist versus an engineer on an R and D line or something like that.

Doug D. Simone: We've made some really great biodegradable bags that can degrade like in 45 days, just laying in the ground without being rotated or something. Great. But if they're a dollar a bag, grocery stores can't afford them, so it can get cost matters.

Jourdyn: That makes me think of, I don't know if you've seen this. This was like recent, like what, two, three years ago, where they had the plastic water bottles that basically dissolve after you compost them or something like that. I don't know. Would that be more of like a polymer engineers type of thing?

Tom McCall: So the polymer chemist, that's probably PLA, which is a corn based material, and it's compostable, and the polymer chemist came up with that polymer using corn instead of petroleum. Now the polymer engineer is going to have to make that material work for.

Doug D. Simone: A part.

Phil Shoemaker: Or they make tha, which is what she's describing. You can take a package like Fritos and you eat all the fritos. And since you're a liver bug, you throw it out on the floor of the forest, a PHA bag will completely disappear because the same bacteria or similar bacteria who made it will eat it. It will completely disappear.

Doug D. Simone: Wow.

Phil Shoemaker: But like Tom points out, there's a real big problem with that. It's incredibly expensive because to get it, you have to grow it with bacteria, harvest the bacteria or harvest the PHA.

Doug D. Simone: Out of the bacteria and make sure.

Phil Shoemaker: You don't contaminate your PHA source with bacteria bodies.

Bill Murphy: If we go to the grocery store and you see two bags of Cheetos, one of them is a dollar, the other one is $2, but the bag is biodegradable. You got to spend an extra dollar for that bag. Some people.

Phil Shoemaker: My wife would, she would.

Bill Murphy: She'S into recycling and biodegradable, but I think most people probably wouldn't.

Jourdyn: That's true.

Bill Murphy: There's a price point that they're not going to pay for recyclability or sustainability.

Phil Shoemaker: Which I can see that is in.

Jourdyn: Like Whole Foods or Airwind, where they have the biodegradable bags and stuff with certain things. I think that's probably the difference why they put certain products in certain stores.

Phil Shoemaker: As Euro and Doug were talking, he's talking about a completely biodegradable plastic, but then you can also modify it to either improve its physical properties or make it more biodegradable or more quickly biodegradable for less cost. Yeah, and then there's things that we're doing that have nothing to do with plastic, and it's completely about biodegradability.

Jourdyn: That actually leads into my next question. So what are the various types of polymers or other compounds that we interact with daily. I know you guys pointed out carpets, clothes. Clothes bags. Bags, water bottles. I don't know if there's anything the.

Garrett Shimmer: Parts in your car from the 90s up until now, every year the EPA tries to mandate fuel efficiency and to get that fuel efficiency rating for each car brand, they're having to lightweight the cars. So how to lightweight your cars? You straight away from metal and you start incorporating plastic materials, like your headliners, your dashboards, your door liners, your seats. All of those have some sort of most likely like some sort of vinyl compound, right, Tom?

Tom McCall: Yeah, I think there's a great commercial now where it's talking about that plastics were to disappear and everything around everybody just starts disappearing. Disappearing in your shoes. Like everything's going electric now. You got to have a lighter car so a lot of metal parts can replace with plastic. The thing that I think we're getting off on the tangent here, but it's a single use plastics that kits a bad rap. It's the water bottle, it's the bags. And that's where everything a lot of people are focused on how do we make that either compostable or recyclable? And right now, all these bottles are recyclable, but we're not doing a good.

Doug D. Simone: Job recycling.

Tom McCall: In medical. Plastics are essential in medical. Any surgeries you have the IV bags, the catheters. Plastics is not going away. But what we have to focus on is how do we eliminate or how do we do a better job recycling or how do we do a better job making things where they'll disappear in.

Doug D. Simone: The ocean, if they get in the ocean degree.

Tom McCall: And I don't remember what the question was now, and I got the thing.

Garrett Shimmer: I think it's plastics in your daily life.

Doug D. Simone: People don't think about it, but my whole left shoulder is plastic. The screws, the sewing in there, the clips, everything they use my hip in January. It's ceramic on one side, plastic on the other. And people just but you don't want that sterile. I want that to last 20 hours. I want it.

Phil Shoemaker: If you look at the volume use, as Doug pointed out, it's carpet. If you look at your house, the floor coverings, the wall coverings, all plastic pipes, water, the insulation on your electrical lines, all those pieces are plastic. And so increasingly what you've seen is a move away from wood, metal, and glass to plastic. It's the first completely new family of materials in about 10,000 years. So, yeah, of course, when you finally come up with that, if they were invented today, if they hadn't existed earlier, they'd be considered a green material because they've replaced so many materials at so much lower a cost and at so much lower cost to the environment than the alternatives. It's just really annoying when you're driving down the road and somebody's tossing water bottles out. There's a plastic bag stuck in a tree or the ocean is filling up. And that's not the plastic that's we're not putting where it belongs.

Doug D. Simone: You got to look at the cost versus we made everything disposable, too. Your vacuum cleaner breaks, what do you do? You don't call Hoover for repair. You throw it away. It's $179. Microwaves used to be two grand. Now they're $99. Most of it's plastic, so it's only going to last so long. But we have to find ways to recycle, reuse redo that. But then you got to separate the guts and what's in it. That's a whole nother avenue. But we've made everything disposable, too. Even these cars, when you get plastic parts, they're going to be easier just to throw away the fender. We're not going to putty and patch them anymore. We injection mold one for $25.

Tom McCall: I think the most shocking one to me was the clothes. No, honestly, I didn't know plastic was in the clothes.

Doug D. Simone: You know the old polyester suits?

Tom McCall: Well, polyester plastic. I'm a trader.

Garrett Shimmer: I'm wearing wool right now.

Doug D. Simone: Hate to say it, but wigs, most.

Phil Shoemaker: Of your wigs are all synthetic.

Doug D. Simone: Even though it feels like hair.

Phil Shoemaker: Those are the ones that turn green if you wash them too much.

Tom McCall: Really makes you look like the synthetic.

Garrett Shimmer: I think a lot of hair is PVC based.

Phil Shoemaker: Is it?

Tom McCall: We're working with a customer who's going to make it biodegradable.

Doug D. Simone: There you go. I wasn't sure what we could say.

Tom McCall: That's very cool, actually.

Doug D. Simone: The idea of what we have worked with. We could sit here hours of fun. We have. That's why I love going to work every day. When I tell my wife sometimes what I'm doing at work, she's like, really? Who would have bunk of that? And it's like you got guys with credit cards saying, I got an idea. Let's try something. Then you got engineers saying, I've been looking at this for the last seven years. I think I have something. It's a great just a great place to go every day. But we'll get into that later.

Jourdyn: If I was a scientist, I hope that's all I'd be making everything just because I could. Just because I could.

Bill Murphy: We got a lot of people like.

Doug D. Simone: That.

Jourdyn: Be like Jimmy Neutron.

Tom McCall: So they don't have the equipment to do it, so they come to us. We have equipment and experience and the knowledge to be able to take their idea and make a pellet so they.

Doug D. Simone: Can make a part.

Tom McCall: There you go. Bring them your idea.

Jourdyn: I want to make Goddard from Jimmy Neutron with my own robot dog.

Tom McCall: We saw those.

Bill Murphy: We did.

Tom McCall: Wait, for real?

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah, we did.

Bill Murphy: It kept coming up to me, looking at me, and I'm freaking out because we just had this weird looking face.

Tom McCall: I'll show you the video.

Jourdyn: After that.

Bill Murphy: 18 year old kids were running them.

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah.

Jourdyn: Because now I'm going to be like, oh, my gosh. I like how all the questions are like leading on top of each other. The next one is what polymer processing does. Sensors start to receive more requests for.

Tom McCall: It biomaterials, we were just talking about it. Biodegradable compostable anything natural, renewable, recyclable. They're trying to get rid of the single use plastics where if it does end up in the ocean, it'll go away. Now the challenge with that is they don't process as easy as petroleum based or thermoplastics so there's different processing that we have to use, different screw designs.

Doug D. Simone: Different molds, different molds.

Tom McCall: But that's really it seems we're getting a lot of interest and a lot of work. Not just us, I mean nationwide, there's a lot of push for this.

Doug D. Simone: Part of the reason too, is if you're going to develop it, you want to be able to develop it on equipment that's already out there. Right. Doesn't do you any good to develop this great something and then have to spend $10 million on a piece of equipment to run it. So people are coming to us saying, can you still use your plastics equipment to process this? And we've been doing it for years now.

Tom McCall: And that's important to investors too, because they want to make sure that they can take the product and run it anywhere and run plastic.

Bill Murphy: And our equipment is industry standard, right? A lot of it's 2025 years old, the 25 year old Extruder will make a product just as good as a.

Doug D. Simone: Two year old Extruder.

Phil Shoemaker: Well, we have to admit that we end up modifying things, well, dramatically sometimes to get yeah, the 25 year old.

Doug D. Simone: One has more duct tape on it.

Tom McCall: Fixes off. But also with that, recycling is huge now because there's two ways to solve the problem. Either you make it disappear or you just keep using it over and over and they don't like each other. Recycling, doesn't like biodegradable material getting into the recycling stream. So we're seeing a lot of push recycling and every time you recycle it, you lose some property. So you have to come up with the additives that's going to keep the property. So you can make the same product every time. Same quality.

Doug D. Simone: Same quality.

Tom McCall: You can see now, I don't know if you've noticed that Coke is going to all clear bottles. You don't have a yellow bottle. And that's for recycling because that was one of the hardest things that you have. Green, yellow, different color. You're trying to make bottles. You can't do that. So that Coke has really pushed. I guess others will follow because again but I think until it's mandated, because again, sometimes it's more expensive from recycled material than it is prime material.

Doug D. Simone: It also goes the price of oil. Oil goes up, recycle becomes more valuable. Oil drops, recycle becomes less valuable.

Tom McCall: So we're seeing a lot of customers come up recycle product and we're trying to make a final compound that they can reuse economically viable product. Because I. Think it's going to be mandates. I think everyone's putting to have at least 100% recycled in their product by I don't know what the 2025 or whatever, but recycling is also a big.

Bill Murphy: It'S here to stay.

Doug D. Simone: You've seen plastic decking, right? Decking boards. You've seen the plastic boards. Decks made out of composite. You've walked on composite boards all over the place.

Tom McCall: Yeah.

Doug D. Simone: So you cut a two by four and a half. How many ingredients are in there? Wooden water, basically, right. You cut one of those plastic decking boards in half, there could be 1015 ingredients, could be fillers, could be whatever, which is a good avenue using recycled material.

Bill Murphy: The majority of those are one gallon polyethylene milk jugs. Hundreds, thousands of them. They recycle them, grind them up, reextrude it, make those bowls. So instead of that milk jug going to the landfill, it's on your deck.

Doug D. Simone: Not that I'm advertising for Fair Harbor, but I bought some shorts and shirts from there last summer. Pair of shorts, 28 bottles. Shirt, twelve bottles. That's what they made them out of. That's interesting.

Jourdyn: Now whenever I look at clothes in the storm, like, I wonder how many bottles it took.

Phil Shoemaker: I know.

Doug D. Simone: Yeah. So, I mean, that's what people are doing. Because when you melt, even though this is rough now, you melt it down, put it in a very fine, fine thread. It's soft as your hair.

Phil Shoemaker: Well, here in North Carolina, a company called Unify does exactly that. They take the old scrap bottles, turn.

Tom McCall: It into fibers, and turn it into clothes.

Phil Shoemaker: And they made a big marketing effort to that effect, which obviously didn't penetrate too well, since you guys have any clue about it. But they're here in North Carolina, and that's what they do.

Bill Murphy: Great company, too.

Doug D. Simone: Well, that's what's fun. That's why people come to us, because you're going to have to put something else in it. What can I do? What can I put in it to help it soften up or fire retardant or make the colors or just whatever. And that's why they come to us, to get the start.

Tom McCall: I ain't curious about this clothes thing.

Jourdyn: Just trying to understand that.

Bill Murphy: Start looking at labels, you rarely see.

Doug D. Simone: Anything, but they wear great and acceptable.

Tom McCall: So like a typical, like, right now, like average bought, like you said, twelve bottles, 25 bottles.

Jourdyn: Sims probably weren't 200 bottles.

Tom McCall: I'm very curious.

Doug D. Simone: Like, I'm after about 45 bottles now. I don't need to do that. Glad we're not filming it.

Phil Shoemaker: It's radio, not TV.

Tom McCall: One day we will be filming.

Doug D. Simone: They tell you how many bottles you use to make a shirt or make shorts.

Tom McCall: That is really so fascinating. I like it. I think that's cool. I never knew that.

Jourdyn: I didn't know that either.

Doug D. Simone: One of the things I tell new customers, I say, you know, the worst thing about working here is they look at me, waiting for me to say, course, my boss Or My Drive. And usually I say, everybody, here is four week vacation. And they look at me and I'm like, that tells you how long everybody's been here. You're bouncing ideas off of a group of 16 people. That 70. 80% of them got four weeks vacation. So, a we're doing something good that they want to be here, and they like being here, and they're staying here. And what's great about that is we all interact together. If I'm helping a customer, it's eventually going to end up injection molding down to euro. So Euro has an interest in making sure that I'm helping him. He's helping me. Phil and Tom are making sure that everybody's working together as the groups are, just because it's trying to make sure that you're getting all the information you can from everybody. We have. Everybody that runs equipment out there knows products inside now. Equipment inside now. So if something comes up, it's not just yes or no. We can make changes. All the guys. Everybody thinks so much. They like what they do, and they like helping people develop. Because I tell everybody comes in. We do anything for a PO. But if we don't make you something, you're not making money. You're not coming back. You're not talking good about us, and we want to get you something. We want to help you keep going on the next step. It's. Just enjoy going to work. There's plenty of times if we have a customer come in for extrusion, they want to sit and talk. We go grab euro. We're going to take 15 minutes of your time and we're all going to sit A lot of the customers, they'll come in first trial with an idea, and then the second trial, they're like, hey, let's talk ahead of time. I want your ideas. We'll all sit together roundtable, talk about where they could go. Screw designs, machine changes. Maybe there's additives out there. Different additives they could try. And it's personal. What it really comes down to is it is personal. We create a relationship with most of our customers that they look forward to seeing you. I mean, God brought me four dozen cookies yesterday.

Phil Shoemaker: I tell you what. Well is not being exactly honest. What the customer said was he extorted Four Boxes Cookies. What he said to them was, if you come back, you got to bring me cookies.

Tom McCall: Well, okay.

Jourdyn: Well, what kind of cookies?

Phil Shoemaker: Because all the best oreos and chips.

Jourdyn: Of wood you lost me. I'm Sorry. I have to bake my cookies. I don't like going to little packages. I'm Sorry.

Tom McCall: Well, now, we do have people who do that.

Doug D. Simone: We have people make pies. I had an apple pie.

Phil Shoemaker: It was really good.

Doug D. Simone: Again, it sounds weird.

Phil Shoemaker: And this is whatever.

Doug D. Simone: I've been invited to two weddings of customers. That's personal script and rest Michael sawy going down to meet with him and having a cigar and a drink.

Tom McCall: It's like you're working with your friends every day.

Doug D. Simone: It's Adam, rest his soul, too, unfortunately. Couldn't wait to see him. And we shared grandbaby pictures. When he walked in, it was like, I don't care what you're here for. Adam cough up the phone, he pulls out the grand. He loved being a granddad, and I got a little three and a half year old. We're changing pictures, and he wanted to work, too. All right, let's figure that out. But that's what happens because we take an interest in who's here. It makes it nice. Euro had customers last three days from out in California, and there's a bond between them, and that interest makes it better. It just makes everything flow better.

Phil Shoemaker: Yeah.

Tom McCall: I think what's unique about us, I think I tell everyone this is you can come to the center, you can run several formulations, £5, whatever. We can injection, mold. We can do the testing all into one roof. And then if you hit on one and you got a customer that wants thousands and thousands of pounds, we can do that, too. And that's kind of unique. You have those megacomp or compounders that can do the truckloads, and you have the research centers that can do the small amounts to have it all under one roof in one place. I mean, that's really what makes it special. And we establish these relationships when they're doing development work. And now when they want to go to production, they don't have to go somewhere else and try to establish a new relationship with a compounder. They know who we are. We're the same people running the small machine as the big machine. And if we're there, if they want to use us, great. That's why we formed the Polymers Technology Center.

Jourdyn: We do want to thank you guys for coming in and talking with us about all the different polymers and how we interact with them every single day. So I'm very informative.

Bill Murphy: Thank you.

Tom McCall: I learned a lot.

Jourdyn: I really did.

Tom McCall: I can't wait for the next one because I feel like we're really diving.

Jourdyn: The next episode is going to be about polymers and clothes.

Tom McCall: We're going to send four different people. Next time that works, we could even come to you.

Doug D. Simone: Who's going to be the one that does come?