President’s Column: Positioning the Vinyl Industry for Success

I’ve just come back from having exciting and productive conversations with colleagues and partners across the vinyl value chain at our annual Vinyl360 conference. The theme for this year’s conference was Strategies for the Future, so it was fitting that we opened our meetings by unveiling the Vinyl Institute’s new roadmap for shaping the future of our industry.

Our new 2020-2023 strategic plan is anchored by seven strategic objectives:

1. Advocate
2. Engage
3. Steward
4. Innovate
5. Inform
6. Develop
7. Perform

The guiding question the plan seeks to answer is, “How do we position ourselves moving forward?” The answer: by working together.

Together, as an industry, we will continue to grow our economic footprint above our $54 billion impact. And we will continue to promote and protect PVC as the material of choice for diverse products that enhance the quality of life.

Here are three examples of how the new strategic plan envisions us collaborating moving forward.

Collaborating on recycling.

One of our core objectives in the new strategic plan is to champion sustainability initiatives through continuous improvement, collaboration, and communications. One example of this is recycling. While it is clear that everyone in the vinyl value chain wants to do more recycling and resource efficiency, companies individually are facing hurdles ranging from transportation costs to supplies to end products. By bringing everyone together, we can talk about hurdles and uncover solutions. One idea we want to explore is a pilot program to collect more rigid PVC that might be diverted from the landfill and recycled into new products that our customers want.

Advocating across targeted states.

While advocacy has always been a core responsibility and objective of the Vinyl Institute, an expanded strategic objective focuses on threats at the state level. The reasons are twofold: the gridlock in Washington over the past decade shows little sign of abating, limiting where we can be effective at a national level and how much we can get done. At the state level, meanwhile, there are more than 300 individual bills in almost 40 states that either offer opportunities for our industry or pose threats.  Moving forward, we want to engage proactively with our industry allies and lawmakers to shape state legislation and continue to tell vinyl’s amazing story.

Building a skilled workforce for the future.

There are workforce challenges across the manufacturing sector, and the vinyl industry is not immune. Our new 4-year strategic plan is designed to ensure that we support growing a skilled workforce in areas where our members and allies across the vinyl value chain have facilities. We’re going to do this in part by collaborating with business partners and by working with the PVC industry and other groups to recruit workers into the industry. We’re also going to explore educational and mentorship initiatives to educate new team members joining the industry.

A strategic plan built on data.

Finally, I want to say a few words about our own planning process.

Our new strategic plan is the result of nine months of work and input from many vinyl industry stakeholders from across the value chain. We began by surfacing data and perceptions about current and projected industry trends, disruptors, and opportunities for collaboration. We then held a series of meetings with our members, staff, and vinyl industry leaders to brainstorm potential major activities and to rank each using a return-on-investment model. Finally, we took a second look using an organizational positioning model. From there, the outcomes you see above represent the vinyl industry’s path forward.

I hope you will join us in making these ambitious industry goals a reality.

To review our strategic plan in its entirety, click here.