New products keep Cooley step ahead

The latest over-the-top billboard in New York City’s Times Square stretches several stories high, covers several sides of a high rise on 42nd Street and touts the national retailer Target.
But, in a way, the high-profile sign serves as an advertisement for a Pawtucket manufacturer, too.
The Cooley Group churned out the material on which the billboard is printed – a membrane that the company calls Enviroflex that’s nearly as thin as paper, and almost as light. But it doesn’t rip easily, allowing the billboard to reach its massive scale undamaged.
And the attribute that Cooley’s customers like the best: It’s relatively inexpensive.
“This is what our industry demands,” said P. Robert Siener Jr., chairman of the Cooley Group, who has been running things at the privately held company since before he bought out its shareholders in 1960. “The customers want lighter [material] and low cost.”
Cooley, which employs about 150 workers at its Esten Avenue headquarters and Cranston factory and another 50 at a plant in South Carolina, is relatively unknown outside the industry, but it has been producing various types of polymer membranes for decades.
And the products are used by its customers for much more than just billboards.
One customer fashions a thicker membrane produced by Cooley into portable fuel tanks that hold as much as 200,000 gallons of gas but can be folded into car-sized boxes when empty. The enormous pillow-like tanks have proved popular with the military in operations overseas.
Other uses for Cooley-formulated membranes: tents, oil booms, loading dock shelters, reservoir liners and roofing materials, among other things.
And the product line is ever-changing as the company continues its relentless development of new polymer formulas.
Jeffrey C. Flath, Cooley president and chief operating officer, says that drive has allowed Cooley to survive despite crushing competition, particularly from companies in China, where some membranes can be mass-produced cheaply.
Flath says Cooley has stayed ahead of competitors by consistently developing lighter, stronger materials and seeking out smaller, higher-margin contracts that other companies can’t handle.
Once a formula is imitated and mass produced by other companies, Cooley often moves on to other products. David A. Pettey, vice president of operations and production innovation, says 25 percent of Cooley’s sales come from products that are less than a year old. Specializing in one product “is the path to failure,” Flath says.
Cooley executives should know. The company has been around since 1926, when Arthur Cooley started making storefront awnings out of cotton fabrics.
In 1929, Siener’s father, Philip R. Siener, was part of a group that bought the business, which continued to grow through the Depression. By 1935, the company had added outdoor furniture to its product line, and then shifted to producing military fabrics during World War II.
The younger Siener joined the company after returning from the war and completing his studies at Brown University. He was promoted to president in 1957, and three years later he bought out the other shareholders. The stock remains in the Siener family.
It hasn’t always been easy, and the sagging economy over the last year or so has tested the company. Cooley executives acknowledge that sales are down 20 percent year over year, largely because – with many construction projects on hold – fewer customers are purchasing roofing membranes.
Cooley has been forced to lay off some workers, but the company is weathering the downturn.
Over the years, the company has embraced new technology moving from cotton fabrics in the early days to polyvinyl chloride – otherwise known as PVC – to more innovative polymers today.
One of the latest innovations is an engineered membrane that is used to make fuel tanks for Formula One race cars that withstand crashes.
Also in keeping with the times, Cooley has focused on sustainability, developing membranes that can be recycled.
Some membranes are a mix of polymers and a backing that are made of different materials, making recycling difficult. Now Cooley produces membranes in which the components are made with the same polymers.
The Target billboard on Times Square will be recycled, too.
When the massive sign comes down in November, the material will be turned into 1,600 tote bags and sold at Target’s Web site, retail price $29.99 each.
Yet another use for a Cooley product. •

COMPANY PROFILE
The Cooley Group
OWNERS: Chairman P. Robert Siener Jr.
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Manufacturer of engineered membranes
LOCATION: 50 Esten Ave., Pawtucket
EMPLOYEES: 200, about 150 of those
in Rhode Island
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1926
ANNUAL SALES: about $80 million in 2008

No posts to display