Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/563465
Without that vision and constant questioning, "How can we do it better?" the company still would depend upon the ebb and flow of the paper industry it first started serving — and, undoubtedly, not be the success story it is today. Van De Hey realized the same kind of machinery that winds paper could be adapted to squash foam into packaging. And the same sort of laminator that added coatings to sheets of paper could be modified to add glue to foam mattress layers — and then adapted to add glue to fabric. Or to add something other than glue to some other kind of product. "Once you build something and then go on to the next and the next, you can keep building off it like building blocks," says Van De Hey, who founded C3 in 1994. With a team of engineers, he and partner Marv Wall, vice president of business, have made dozens of such connections and associations, leading the machinery producer from paper making to other industries such as foam, automotive and food and beverage. C3 works with industry leaders including Schreiber Foods, Neenah Paper, Versa Paper, Future Foam, Pacific Urethanes, Brooklyn Bedding and other top national producers of foam products. It sells machines throughout North America and other parts of the world, including China. In the 1990s, 80 percent of C3's business was in the paper industry. Now it's 10 to 15 percent, Van De Hey says. C3's ingenuity led to a 2015 Insight Innovation Award for the development of both its CWU2000 foam compression machine for mattresses and its Smart Identity Tracking system, a type of smart labeler. e company also expects to see 20 to 30 percent growth over last year. Invented by C3 in 2014, the CWU2000 can squish foam products into more compact and easily packable and transportable size. e compressed mattress is secured with its own special film. Once the product is unwrapped, it pops back into its original shape. On a tour of C3's floor, Van De Hey points out a stack of rectangular foam mattresses. "If I fill the truck up (with those), I might only have four or five thousand pounds of weight," he says. "Well, I can haul 40,000 pounds down the road. So if I can fill that truck up 10 times more and load it down, I'm more effective." Again, why pay to ship air? Darrell Nance of Pacific Urethanes in Ontario, Calif., discovered C3's compression machine at the International Sleep Products Association expo in New Orleans and has been using it for about six months. "It was kind of the buzz at the show," Nance says. "We thought it was probably the most innovative way to package a mattress. Our Internet bedding business continues to grow, and we decided it would be a good addition to our existing equipment." Idea Team c o n t i n u e d "He tries to look beyond the current project into what this could become — what are the possibilities for expanding beyond the project you're working on? The vision is probably what sets him apart." — Gary Weber, vice president of manufacturing, Laminations Great Northern Corporation, about C3 founder and CEO Joe Van De Hey 24 | I NSIGH T • S e p t e m b e r 2 0 15 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m