"Only the beginning, only just a start..."

I appreciate the comments and sentiments today especially from my parent company, North American Plastics, Jason Askew , CEO and Spence Miller , President, Laird Plastics. It has been a whirlwind since Modern Plastics was acquired in 2006 with then CEO Mark Kramer , who was a strong proponent of the Modern Plastics “brand and vision” and who served not only as a mentor and dear friend but also taught me what integrity, respect and kindness really means.

I attend what we call “owners forecast” meetings once a year and have to present to the owners (who show up for virtually every meeting for every profit center manager), our wonderful shareholders, the CEO, the CFO, division President’s and others…it’s a big roundtable and I have 30-minutes to present the business and plans going forward.

I have told this story before but it bears repeating.

I walk into the meeting many years ago and everyone stands up as I walk into the room, we shake hands, sit down and then I start right into my forecast presentation.

Modern Plastics had a multimillion dollar a year account that for a variety of reasons I made the decision to part ways with, in effect, turning down several million dollars’ worth of business. Take the first note here; I made that decision – not my parent company, not the CEO, not the regional manager or anyone above me, which is a credit to our business model of decision making at the “local level.” ?

I start the meeting by saying “I made a decision to walk away from our largest customer (at the time) that just wasn’t a good fit for Modern Plastics.” I explained with just a mere few words why I did that. ?Then I paused, and I waited. I looked around the room and I remember seeing not looks of disbelief or anyone being upset, but I specifically remember seeing a few of the shareholders and others in the room with a gentle smile. There was silence in the room. I was waiting for the onslaught of “WHY did you do that?”

After I looked at all of them and my own awkwardness left me, I carried on with my presentation. ?

I finished the meeting, walked out of the room and I closed the door and just stood in the hallway. The executive assistant who monitors the movement of the managers into the meeting asked me if I was alright.

I said…” yeah…” and walked back to change clothes and head out for the rest of the day (we were in Orlando and of course, those of you who know I love Disney, I quickly changed clothes and headed out to EPCOT!).

As I sat at the French Pavilion in EPCOT, sipping my Grand Marnier Orange slush drink they are known for, it hit me in a huge way why they said nothing and it was this; they figured I had good reasons to make that difficult decision. They assumed that I’d somehow make up that business and perhaps make it up in ways that were better fitted for Modern Plastics (and we sure as hell did!)

Beyond all of that do you have any idea what they all did for me that particular day personally?

What they did was this; they gave me a vote of confidence like no one has even done before. They figured, “Bing must have his reason(s) and let’s carry on and go forward.”

That is something I will never forget and something that stays with me every single day I come to work that reinforces the responsibility I have not only from a personal standpoint in running this business but also from the enormous responsibility I have to my employees, our owners, shareholders and the management of North American Plastics. ?

I’ve said to my ownership in the past “you pay me to make several quality decisions a day and to execute those decisions.”

It is my job that no matter what external factors (economy, inflation, supply chain and so forth) or what internal factors I might face, the pressure I put on myself is that we as the Modern Plastics company must continue to remain immensely customer focused and continue to bring real value that we can readily articulate to them.

Modern Plastics is 78-years strong in 2023.

This year we just successfully completed our AS9100D and AS9120B (ISO 9001:2015) registration with zero non-conformances during the audit to add to our ISO 13485:2016 for our Medical Plastics business.

I love what I do here at Modern Plastics, now 45-years, and for those of you old enough to remember the 1969 single from the group Chicago “Beginnings”, as the lyric says, “only the beginning, only just the start” –and that’s just how I feel here at Modern Plastics and can’t wait to see the continued evolution of our business.

Thank you North American Plastics, thank you to our customers (and soon to be customers!) and thank you to arguably the most brilliant plastics employee team in the business.

I also want to recognize the very difficult blood, sweat and tears of work when we were a private company from my grandfather, Joseph C. Carbone, who founded the company in 1945, to my father, James A. Carbone who was the second generation company President and all other family members that helped build Modern Plastics over the many years.

Ok, back to work!

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