Packaging Etcetera Podcast

Season One In Review

• Matthew Mulvey • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Hi folks, welcome back to another episode of the Packaging Etc. podcast. This is episode 10, my final episode from season one, and I wanted to take a couple minutes and share with you how the first nine episodes went, what went well, what might use some improvement, maybe what needs to end up on the cutting room floor, some personal learnings of mine, and what's next. So with that, episode one, I was interviewed by my wife Joanna. And encouragingly, I received a lot more positive feedback than I thought I would. I attribute that more to maybe her popularity and the fun dynamic we have, more than anything else. But being that it was my first ever recorded episode, going back and listening to that episode, I can pick up on things that I'd probably do differently if I had a chance. My first observation was it sounded scripted, which it kind of was. All cards on the table, want to be honest. I'm a bit of a planner, so for anyone that knows me personally, this should come as no surprise. Then for episode two, starting to get the hang of things a little bit, I met with Kristen Kupo, president of the NJPEC for 2025. We talked about the importance of networking, which is something I have and will continue to preach to younger generations, packaging or otherwise. Referring to the old adage, it's not what you know, it's who you know. I firmly believe that. And anyone who's sat in my class, who's worked on my team, who I've who I've collaborated with in a work environment or otherwise, they've heard me say that. Kristen had a lot to say about the power of networking and even put in a plug for the NJPEC, which, by design, was one of my intents with that episode. I wanted to make sure we showcased and spoke a little bit about what the club represents, where we've been, where we are, where we're headed, what we're all about. That club exists for two reasons. Number one, networking amongst packaging professionals. Number two, and I would argue maybe a little bit more than half the intent, we raise funds to support packaging students in today's day and age, the future packaging professionals in this industry. To date, we've given out over $800,000 in scholarships since the late 1960s. Me personally, I'm actually a recipient of that scholarship. And that's what originally brought me into the club. Hoping to see today's recipients, five to ten years from now, active in the club, working their way up, committee chairs, maybe even on the executive board. And anyone listening, on a side note, we also talked about sourdough bread, which also happens to be a favorite of mine. Then in episode three, Guido Schmitz of Pop Hacks. We spoke about the fiber revolution in packaging. Guido told us about some of the exciting things currently in development around fiber-based packaging initiatives and which industries are poised to take a big step forward in that area. Really looking forward to reconnecting with him at some point in the future. See how things are going in the world of fiber. Episode four. Spoke to my buddy Leo Frias from Friba Pack. I was doing the math recently and realized Leo and I have been friends for over 10 years. But most of our face-to-face encounters have been at trade shows, like Interfects in New York, Pac Expo, Chicago. Despite that, we've always found opportunities for some tomfoolery. And yes, I did just say tomfoolery. As for the episode, though, while we're supposed to be talking about packaging and machinery, I think we spoke more about cigars and food. But hey, cigars and food need packaging too. Episode five, reconnected with my longtime friend Bridget Meadows. We discussed her recent departure from corporate America and her dive into life coaching and our origin story of meeting on a group trip to Italy. Happened to be my first time outside the U.S., which ended up being a two-week trip touring different Italian packaging machinery manufacturers. Interestingly enough, I have done and I'm currently doing business with several of those vendors that help sponsor the program, which obviously is a testament to the success of that program. Episode six. Met with one of my favorite professors from my days at Rutgers, Dr. Tom Nosker. We learned about the past, present, and potential future of plastic recycling and its applications and packaging, or should I say potential applications?

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Nosker is a brilliant polymer chemist, really knows his stuff. It was a lot of fun catching up with him. Talking about the old days at Rutgers. How we met up at Old Queen's Tavern in New Brunswick one day. Supposed to talk about class. I don't think I cracked the book. But it was an opportunity for me to see a professor in a completely different light. And obviously that was an eye-opening experience for me. Episode seven, spoke with none other than the Banding Queen, my friend Patty Wexler of Wexler Packaging. Patty shared her story about how she became the Banding Queen, and now that I'm aware of the nickname, I'm really going to lean into this. Truly one of the nicest and most genuine people I've met in my many years in packaging. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to have been included in Wexler Packaging's 50th year anniversary celebration in Chicago. Between that night and Patty's NJPC Hall of Fame induction ceremony, I can say it's impossible to spend time with her and not enjoy yourself. Episode 8 caught up with Rob Kazabowski from the IOPP Consultants Council talking about that recent resurgence. For those of you that may not be aware, the Packaging Consultant Council is a group of professional consultants in the packaging industry that provide various services, including, and I'm quoting the website here, packaging materials, processes, handling, storage, transportation, market research, packaging technologies, applications, and interfaces. Another way of saying it is if you have a need for a packaging consultant, be sure to check out the Consultant Council through IOPP. Chances are one or several of those participating members have the specific experience you need. After a quick jaunt through how the council is back and thriving, we dove into extended producer responsibility, albeit an area in which I'm less familiar, but I'm learning. Rob was kind enough to explain at a high level for those of us needing a crash course. Episode nine, Rocky Batesel discussing his recent award-winning invention, Snapslide. As a tie-in to a previous episode, my introduction to Rocky and Snapslide was rather fortuitous. I was at a networking event sponsored by the Philadelphia chapter of the IOPP after, and I believe it was PACExpo East at the Philly Convention Center. This was a couple years ago. All about networking, right? So I'm there with maybe seven or eight other packaging peeps. And in walks Jason Sordoni, who is one of Rocky's partners on the Snapslide Venture. He had samples of the Snapslide package and was showing it around to everyone at the table. We all were, and apologies for this, but kind of nerding out fanboying slash fangirling over this thing. It was pretty cool. Chasen and I spoke briefly about the invention, and when I mentioned wanting to learn more so I could follow their journey. Then earlier this year, Chasen connected me with Rocky so that I could ask him to present his Snapslide story to my packaging manufacturing methods class at Rutgers. It was fun watching the students experience what I had a year prior at that networking event. Now, every time I'm on LinkedIn, Snapslides popping up in my feed. Either featured in a technical article or being talked about for another award. Well, Rocky, wishing you, Chasen, and the rest of the Snap Slide team all the best. Good luck. So let me take a quick moment to officially thank all of my season one guests. It was my absolute pleasure having each of you on the podcast. Look forward to reconnecting with you soon. And thank you to all my listeners so far. Appreciate you guys listening in. Hope to bring some more interesting content for you in season two. We'll talk about that soon. I gotta say, it's been a lot of fun so far. Any nerves I may have had at the start are mostly gone. I still get some butterflies here and there, but it's kind of what makes it exciting. One of the biggest challenges I've had with this podcast was listening to my own voice and overcoming that urge to stop myself from speaking. For those of you old enough to remember a good old-fashioned answering machine, same deal. I've never gotten used to hearing my own voice. But it's been a great learning experience. How to navigate Buzz Sprout, where this podcast is hosted, basically self-taught on Music Hub, especially Audacity, where I've been learning how to edit the audio. Thank God for YouTube videos. But hosting this podcast has forced me to become better at listening. Not just hearing people, but really listening. Between the lines. Thinking on the fly. Trying to figure out how to identify follow-up questions to keep the conversation flowing, keep the conversation on topic, and really provide a true end-to-end story. I truly believe this experience has helped me, both professionally and personally. At one point or another, we all feel that we need to work on our communication skills. I have to say, starting and running a podcast has certainly helped me. I've gotten some great feedback from friends, colleagues, and the general public. A few things to mention, and for those of you that reached out, thank you. Firstly, special shout out to Eileen Grimes for the idea of including packaging trivia. Although coming up with tidbits every episode may prove challenging at some point apparently being real resonates with people. Episode one is evidence of that. And as previously mentioned, having my wife interview me in episode one seemed to be a great decision and was really well received. Alright, want to move on to a different segment for a minute. Wanted to share a couple career observations. So a lot of people that I've spoken to about my career progression already kind of know my arc. But one of the things I wanted to share was when I first got out of college, my first job was in a package testing lab. And while it gave me great experience to draw from when I moved into a more development role, it wasn't until I started working in a production environment, boots on the ground, equipment in front of me. You know, that's where the magic happens. But it wasn't until that point in my career when I really understood the implications of my work product. I use this experience as an example and a quote-unquote soapbox moment to the younger generations, where I recommend very strongly go work in a production environment, maybe during an internship or co-op or early in your career. Understanding how your product is made, packaged, handled, tested, distributed, only makes you better and a more educated engineer. Another soapbox moment, and this is regardless of your line of work, until you can truly understand the voice of the customer, whether that customer is internal or external or both, you won't fully comprehend how to optimize your own work product. That is my story. I'm sticking to it. Nowadays, my job aligns more with packaging machinery projects. So my internal customers are the operations team that are going to have to run that machine. My internal customers are the mechanics that are going to have to fix that machine and PM that machine. My internal customers are the EHS group making sure that that machine is safe for our employees to use. My external customers are the end user, whether that be someone buying a lipstick, someone buying a bar of soap, a patient going to a pharmacy to collect their prescription. Customers aren't only whoever's buying your product at the end of the line. I try to keep that mentality every day I go to work. Onto a fun note, I invented a word. Well, at least I think I did. Alright, invented isn't the right word. More like I discovered a new meaning for it. So the word is puggle. Document the day you heard that. Puggle. It's a mashup of words packaging and muggle. So in the world of Harry Potter, the word muggle applies to any non-magical person, according to a recent internet search. Well, my word, and not the dog breed mix between a beagle and a pug, puggle is a packaging muggle. One who has not yet had the wool pulled back from their eyes to the wonderful world of packaging. Referring back to my light bulb moment, I've made reference to multiple times, a puggle is someone who has not yet experienced their own light bulb moment in packaging. I also wanted to take a minute and ask myself some of the questions that I've asked my guests throughout season one. The first question advice that I would give someone either interested in or just getting started in packaging. And I would say keep an open mind. But during my first job out of college, I was offered a rotational program where I could experience other parts of the business, not just packaging. Maybe work in finance, maybe work in supply chain quality. Get a flavor for some other areas of the business. I turned it down. And I think back to that decision. Often, that was a missed opportunity for me. I didn't keep an open mind. I was so sure I wanted to work in packaging. I felt like that type of program would be for someone that really wasn't sure what they wanted to do. And so this would give them a flavor for some different functional areas within a company. And so it wasn't for me. And I wasn't going to waste a seat on someone like me that knew packaging was my thing. Fast forward all these years later, yes, packaging is my thing. But I think it would have been pretty cool and it would have been a grand experience for me to have gone into that program and seen some of these other functions earlier in my career rather than later. So, to my initial point, keep an open mind. Second question. A few interesting facts about myself, completely unrelated to packaging. I grew up playing soccer all the way up through high school. And I used to be able to kick a 35-yard field goal. I think if I tried it now, I'd probably pull a hamstring. So unfortunately, can't prove that anymore. And for those of you from the central New Jersey area that are familiar with the Asbury Park Press newspaper, I was one of the last, if not the last, child paper carrier for the Asbury Park Press. So for anyone that has ever seen that John Cusack movie, Better Off Dead, I was the kid on the bike screaming, I want my $2. But I was the only 12-year-old in the neighborhood that had a job. Okay. Next, I wanted to bring up a couple of rants slash observations. Gonna put a pin in a few of these, and maybe these will come back during some season two episodes. My first rant, what has LinkedIn become? I understand there's algorithms out there and they're working overtime. But my feed seems to be filled with so many different political arguments, and I really sit on the fence here because regardless of your political stance, someone will post something inflammatory, and I'll inevitably see. I just like to go and read the comments. That's entertainment to me. You can almost always count on somebody posting, this is political, it doesn't belong on LinkedIn. But on the flip side, I also understand politics impacts business. So there's a certain, yeah, it belongs, no, it doesn't belong argument. If people are just going on LinkedIn to rant and rave, you can do that on Facebook and Instagram and elsewhere. But if you have a legitimate complaint or gripe, yeah, sure, that makes sense. I also wanted to bring something else up, completely unrelated to social media. It's called survivorship bias. I actually brought this up in my class recently. And this is all about not only having access to data, but knowing how to interpret the data. And I thought this was a great example, and I just felt like sharing it with everyone. During World War II, Allied bomber planes were coming back to the airfields with bullet and shrapnel holes. And some of the military commanders had planned to reinforce the area of the planes that had the most holes with the goal of increasing their chances of making it back. And then there was a statistician. I had to look him up. I want to make sure I got the name right. His name's Abraham Wald. He actually suggested reinforcing the areas of the planes that had no holes. Because those were the planes that weren't coming back. Those were the more critical areas. So my point is you can gather all the data that you want, but until you know how to interpret it and put it to work for you is entirely another. One of the reasons why I've been focusing my efforts in training towards statistical analysis. You can gather the data, but if you don't know what you're looking at, how are you going to make an educated decision? One more thing I wanted to bring up that I thought was really kind of interesting, I saw recently. They call it the Bic Pen conundrum. Basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You look at a big pen design from the 1960s and one from today, damn near the same thing. So, how many packaging examples out there follow a similar arc? Well, if you have a good example of a packaging, it ain't broke, don't fix it moment, please reach out. I'd love to hear about it. Maybe we can talk about it in a future episode. And another fun little tidbit, just something to throw out there. Saw a sign posted in a cigar lounge in Napa Valley earlier this year, and it kind of stuck with me. It just said, is a cigar considered salad? No pun intended, I'm gonna unwrap that at some point in the future. Wanted to talk for a minute also about recent and upcoming events specific to Rutgers packaging and NJPEC. Recently held the third annual Rutgers Packaging Roundtable event. This year we focused on cosmetics and consumer products. We had three panelists, one each from Estee Lauder, Halion, and Battlord Beauty. It was a phenomenal event. Well attended, the panelists were excellent. Students were engaged. We raffled off a bunch of mentors to the students. Really was a lot of fun. NJPEC Package of the Year Awards Banquet, Madison Hotel, Morristown, every year. Always the biggest event. It's a who's who of packaging in the tri-state area. Coming up in the spring, NJPEC will have their annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony. By the way, all this stuff is available on the events page of www.njpec.com. Make sure you hit the website. If you're interested in membership, fill out a membership application. Always looking for new people. Come on out, support the students, network with your fellow professionals. Alright, switching gears a little bit, a couple of personal happenings. We recently added one to the family, not too long ago. My stepson Tyler married his amazing, well now wife, Cassie, Labor Day weekend. Beautiful wedding. Absolutely beautiful. The venue, the weather. So many family members and friends. But what got to me, what stood out the most to me, was the genuine happiness I saw in their smiles as they walked down the aisle. It really was a proud moment for my wife and I. Especially seeing Gabrielle and Dylan and the bridal party. Our whole family being represented there. It really was a moment. One you really can't truly understand until you experience it for yourself. Another random happening. This goes back maybe six months ago. It was a random Saturday. My wife was leaving the house. She was gonna go out and she was gonna go out and run some errands. My goal was to head down to the basement and get a little cleanup work done, do a little spring cleaning kind of thing. Well, she comes back, I don't know how many hours later, and not only had I not cleaned a thing, but I had actually made an even bigger mess in the basement. Because when I got started, one of the things I found was a Sony turntable she had bought for me 10 plus years ago. I used to be a big audiophile, so I had the whole home theater set up and whatnot. But I didn't have any room to set up the turntable. So it just kind of made its way to the basement. Kind of one of those, I'll get to it eventually kind of things. And then I just forgot all about it. So when I saw this turntable, I was like, I gotta sit down. I want to listen to some of my old vinyl. So instead of cleaning, here I am busting out the old home theater system and connecting it in the basement. So she comes home hours later, I'm on the floor, mess in the basement, and I'm listening to old vinyl albums. And I'm just happier than a pig in mud. Before she can get mad, which I was anticipating, I grabbed an Elvis LP. She's a huge Elvis fan. So it was all part of my master plan. So I pop this Elvis album on. I bring her down in the basement. I'm like, just no judgment, just listen. And when she started hearing it, I could just see the calm come over her and just sheer happiness of listening to Elvis on vinyl. The crackle, just it just sounds better. Well, we both kind of had the same idea at the same time. And within about 15 minutes, that whole setup was now upstairs in our living room. Two weeks later, we have a new cabinet. We're ordering vinyl on Amazon. We're going to these vinyl bazaars. We went to one in Red Bank, New Jersey not too long ago. Street vendors with vinyl everywhere. And that's become kind of our Friday night veg activity. We'll sit around and, you know, instead of everybody watching TV or playing on their phones, we kind of sit and just listen to music. Talk about nostalgia. Then not too long ago, after listening to one of our new albums, Aretha Franklin, actually, she was off the bed. And that's when I pulled out a record straight out of my childhood. Michael Jackson's Thriller. It's the actual album I had as a child. To the point where you can actually look at the album cover and you can still see my handwriting imprints, my childhood handwriting, in the cover. It was the thriller album, the original Top Gun soundtrack, Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Volumes 1 and 2, Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet. Those albums were my childhood. I was 10 years old again, sitting on the floor of my bedroom, building an Air Force out of Legos, which I still have in the basement, by the way. And it's amazing how music can have that effect. And it's one of the reasons why I love listening to film scores. I kind of nerd out to that a little bit. But John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giachino, James Horner. I go to the movies nowadays. I kind of watch the movie, but I'm listening to the soundtrack. And it's really amazing because you can listen to the soundtrack and you can know what's about to happen based on the music. Okay, enough about that. Time to put a bow on this episode and move on for season two. So the season two roster is already shaping up to be an exciting one. Be sure to tune in as those episodes start to drop without mentioning any names. Some of our season two guests will include leaders in contract manufacturing, an expert from the environmental side of packaging, and a deeper look into what life was like on campus as a Rutgers packaging engineer in the 1990s versus the 2020s. I'm also excited at the prospect of bringing in a co-host for a couple of episodes, so stay tuned for that. For those of you that have followed since the beginning, thank you for your support. I do appreciate it. For those of you that have recently dipped into an episode or two, welcome. Hope you choose to stick around, check out what's new. As always, feel free to reach out through the contact us section on my website, www.precisioneng Solutions.com. Let me know if you have any thoughts on the podcast, maybe some suggestions for future guests or topics, or if you just feel like reaching out. Well, that's a wrap on season one. Thanks everyone for listening in! Bye bye.