Sticking with Fun Brands

Shurtape Technologies uses innovation to grow its global reach.

BY JILL SELL

Duck Tape — it is used for kids’ crafts, decorating teenage lockers, creating prom dresses and tuxes and building parade floats. Swords and shields are made from tape for fantasy role playing games enjoyed by adults wearing Medieval costumes. The tape repairs fishing rods and can decorate or hold together most anything in your home. DIYers and professional painters and other contractors couldn’t work without it.

Duck Tape, and its even stronger, specific-purpose cousins made by its parent company, temporarily fix eyeglasses, air leaks and broken pieces and parts on trains, planes, boats, mo torcycles, cars and bikes. The manufac turer doesn’t necessarily recommend some of those quick fixes, but you get the idea.

Duck Tape (and Trust E. Duck, its easily identified, much-loved logo), along with FrogTape and T-Rex, as well as industrial brands, are well known here and in some cases, globally. There aren’t many items in the world that appeal equally to fun-loving preschoolers as well as serious, business-minded adults. But the tape products converted (cut from “jumbo” rolls from the mill) and distributed by Shurtape Technologies’ Consumer and Craftsman Group in Avon, fit that description. The tape is manufactured at Shurtape’s Corporate Headquarters and Industrial Group in Hickory, North Carolina. Shurtape sells more than 1 billion yards of tape per year. That is enough to go to the moon and back 21 times, based on a 2-inch-wide strip, according to the company. The 644,000-square-foot Avon facility is now 40% larger than the original building built on 200 acres purchased by the company in 1996. Between 350 and 400 employees work at Avon, depending upon seasonal fluctuations. Nationally, the company counts 1,400 employees; globally 1,700. Shurtape’s global footprint includes facilities in Germany, the United

Kingdom, China, Mexico, Peru, United Arab Emirates and Australia.

“We do converting in Avon, but the primary space allocation is for distribution,” says Bill Kahl, Shurtape’s executive vice president of marketing and a member of the family that founded and expanded the branded products. “We also do all the design, branding and marketing in Avon.”

That includes promoting the company’s most recently announced Duck Pro by Shurtape BR Code Scannable Solutions, introduced in February at the 2023 National Association of Home Builders International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas. The new adhesive tape and label products have numerous industrial applications, including instant accessing of material tracking, maintenance records, equipment inspections and more. A code label placed on a hardhat can be scanned and information about the wearer (certification, required training and other personnel data) is immediately available.

It’s easy to be amazed by a company that supports industry and commerce with its vital tape products, but also has made Glow-in-the Dark Duck Tape and Scented Duck Tape, as well as tape adorned with camouflage print, polka dots and colorful stripes for craft use.

“We have been successful because we have built on our brands, starting with Duck Tape,” says Kahl. “It’s been a combination of a strong focus on customers and the ability of the sales and marketing side of our business helping us bring high-quality products to our end users.”

As a privately held company,

Shurtape Technologies declined to discuss financials. But a 2023 IncFact research company profile lists Shurtape as having more than $500 million in revenue.

“Through our Insights and Innovations team, we conduct market research and evaluate trends, which ultimately seeds our new product funnel of both ‘new and improved’ and ‘new to the world’ products,” says CEO Vuk Trivanovic, who began his career with Shurtape in 2015, was named CEO of the Industrial and Engineering Solutions Group in 2020 and whose role was expanded in 2021 to include the full Shurtape group of companies and the Avon facility.

Kahl says consistency is a major reason Shurtape products are trusted and chosen over items manufactured by competitor tape makers.

“Pros, like professional painters, use our tape every day. It’s a tool for them and they need to get the same quality day to day. Consumers buy it in less quantity, of course. But if you need to fix a hose on your car and you are stranded on the side of the road, you want that tape to work,” says Kahl.

And that’s the beauty of a good duck (or duct) tape. It works. And it has worked for decades. But like many items invented generations ago, duct tape has a complicated and not crys tal-clear history.

Most product historians (as well as Kahl) give credit to Johnson & Johnson for improving and promot ing modern duct tape. “Duck tape” (so named, some say, because water rolled off it like rain on a duck’s back) was used in World War II for everything from temporary bandages to fixing bro ken windows and holding uniforms to gether. After the war, it became known

COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS:

1880 Shuford Mills, a major textile producer and manufacturer of spun yarns and cordage, is founded

1955 Shuford Mills creates a tape division

1971 Jack Kahl buys Melvin A. Anderson Co., and changes its name to Manco

1980 Duck Tape brand name is registered by Kahl

1996 Shurtape Technologies spins off from Shuford Mills

2009 Manco assets (including Duck brands) acquired by Shurtape Technologies

2010 FrogTape acquired from Inspired Technologies

2020 All companies transition to widely as “duct tape” because of its ability to hold ventilation ducts together.

Fast forward to 1971. Bill Kahl’s father, Jack Kahl, bought the Melvin A. Anderson company and changed its name to Manco, buying tape from Shuford Mills in North Carolina. Kahl officially branded Duck Tape in 1980, and the company became successful in selling its products at Walmart, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware and other retailers. John Kahl, Bill’s brother, was company CEO from 2000 until his retirement in 2021.

“In 1998, my family decided to sell the business to The Henkel Group, a large German conglomerate that makes adhesives, cosmetics and detergents,” says Kahl. “They had a lot of good brands, an impressive research and development division and a global reach. We were able to take advantage of all that. We globalized our perception, and it was a learning experience.”

In 2009, Shurtape Technologies of North Carolina purchased the Duck brand from Henkel, forming ShurTech Brands. That subsidiary changed its name to Shurtape Technologies Consumer and Craftsman Group in 2020.

“The Consumer and Craftsman business remains in the same entrepreneurial spirit on which it was founded — innovation and imagination,” says Trivanovic. “We continue to carry on that vision as we work to develop better, easier solutions for everyday household and workforce tasks.”

The company understandably protects its products under development and won’t talk about items not yet released. That does raise an amusing and probably fanciful vision of Shurtape research and development staff busily sticking pieces of experimental sticky tape all over lab walls and each other.

But we do know that in December 2022, the company acquired ProTapes & Specialties Inc., a tape manufacturer and converter. That business serves a variety of markets, including graphic arts, library and school supply, precision die-cutting and fabricating and others.

Throughout the years, Shurtape has remained involved in philanthropy and the communities in which its employees live and work. Trivanovic points to the Stuck at Prom Scholarship Contest that “challenges participants to get creative in designing their prom attire out of Duck Tape for a chance to win scholarship money.” Students across the country now participate in the event.

“This will be the 23rd year we have hosted the contest, and we continue to see clever, creative and meaningful designs,” Trivanovic says.

In addition, the annual Avon Heritage Duck Tape Festival, sponsored by the company, “is always a hit with Northeast Ohioans and has even gained national attention, drawing Duck Tape enthusiasts from across the country,” says Trivanovic.

“The festival is traditionally held every year over Father’s Day weekend, as a nod to dads’ favorite fix-all — duct tape. The family friendly weekend is always free and features larger-than life-sized Duck Tape sculptures, delicious food, activities and live entertainment,” he notes.

And the Duck is not going anywhere soon. Trivanovic says the Avon facility “remains our central point for our Consumer and Craftsman Group, focusing on marketing DIY, EIY (Express it Yourself) and home and office products under the Duck, T-Rex, FrogTape, Painter’s Mate and Shurtape brands.”

In addition, the 15-year lease agreement Shurtape Technologies had with ILPT Avon LLC that was to expire in May 2024 has been extended to May 2031.