BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: 2020-BEYOND
“Our most successful new products have been joint innovations with our major customers,” says Rodger Fuller, Chief Operating Officer.
For decades, we’ve prided ourselves on making decisions at the same table as our customers around the world. Innovation happens when we engage with them—listening and collaborating to find solutions. It certainly doesn’t happen overnight. It’s earned.
Few products created purely out of the desire to sell something new end up being viable, let alone sustainable or cost-effective.
Often, breakthroughs require considerable investment upfront. But the aim of technology is ultimately to reduce cost over time. “It’s winning through technology,” says former CEO Harris DeLoach. “It’s winning through ways to lower their cost.”
Our customer relationships have succeeded and endured because of transparency from both sides. They’ve involved constant collaboration, leading to packaging breakthroughs that everyone involved can claim proudly.
Innovation means mutual, constant information sharing.
Rodger acknowledges the challenges that can come with lengthy (if rewarding) partnerships. “We’ve got a joint venture that’s over 30 years old,” he says. “Leadership changes; the company changes; the industry changes. People get frustrated and say, ‘We can do better.’ But we’ve worked through all that [through] good, trusting, open relationships.”
One of the main rewards of these relationships is winning insider status with our partners.
“We have a lot of customers where we are deeply embedded in their planning processes,” says Elizabeth Rhue, Vice President of Global Environmental, Sustainability, and Technical Services. “They know we will bend over backwards for them in a lot of cases. … When we have to say no, it’s because we know that we can't do it with good quality, good service. … There’s a level of respect from our customers when they know [that’s] the reason we say no.”
When we’re sitting at the same table as our partners, we can look each other in the eye and cocreate a brighter future together.