Trex company winchester va7/13/2023 ![]() ![]() His take-no-prisoners approach proved shock therapy for Trex's collegial culture. Raised in a family of military veterans and armed with a Wharton M.B.A., Kaplan had spent 26 years at Harsco, where he managed factories for propane tanks and high-pressure cylinders and demonstrated a certain coldheartedness, culling employees as needed. "He had a certain confidence and calmness-a guy who knows what he wants and can get everyone marching in the same direction." (See also: Forbes interviewed Kaplan when he first took the job in 2008.) "We knew almost immediately Ron was the guy," says Frank Merlotti Jr., Trex board member since 2006. Trex's market share had fallen to 30%, and the cure proved as bad as the disease, as a decision to swell the labor force to monitor quality by hand also swelled costs, throwing the company into a loss. Even after two members of Trex's original management team came out of retirement to try to fix operations, the damage was done. New competitors like Fiberon and AZEK stepped in, introducing more durable products. ![]() But in 2003 management tried to lower costs by buying lower grades of plastic-yes, there's a quality hierarchy in retail bags-and the results were dismal.Ĭustomers saw their new deck surfaces deteriorate, and they started filing lawsuits (Trex settled in 2010 and still pays to replace defective decks). That garbage is spun into gold: The bales of plastic are heated and combined with industrial wood shavings to make the composite deck boards. Giant bales of plastic bags arrive by the truckload every day, complete with food detritus and supermarket logos. If you visit Trex's headquarters in Winchester, Va., in the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains, it's immediately obvious what its key component is: trash. Controlling 90% of their market, they attempted to goose margins further. ![]()
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