Early in his career, a manager told Kevin Smith that he had leadership potential. This defining event changed Smith’s course. “He was willing to invest in me because of that, which gave me a huge amount of confidence,” he said. “That confidence, in turn, allowed me to see possibilities in my role for bringing more value to the company and motivated me to work harder to bring that value.”
As the president and CEO of Vonco Products, Smith sees the most important thing a leader can do is look at each member of the team with a sense of possibility. “Today, I work with my leadership not just on running the company but on facilitating their personal development,” said Smith. “I encourage them to do the same with their direct reports. I want to know what each member of my team sees as their purpose.”
Both a packaging company and a components company, Vonco fills a unique space of manufacturing both custom flexible packaging solutions and custom flexible component solutions. In the last three years, staffing grew to almost 200 and the company doubled the corporate headquarters and manufacturing footprint to over 190,000 square feet.
With Smith at the helm, the past year has led to successful acquisitions of McFarlane Medical, Flex-Pack and Genesis Plastics Welding. “One of the best ways to demonstrate our commitment to our medical and consumer clients is to be flexible and scalable upon our capabilities to provide the end-to-end solutions they require,” said Smith. This has led to planning to build upon world class consumer manufacturing with investments in capital equipment, experienced staff and best practices.
“At Vonco, we use various tools and analysis to understand where people have their natural and adapted energies,” said Smith. “And then we support them in developing the technical skills they need.” According to Smith, these efforts support the company’s tagline of “We care more.” He said it’s a lot more than a marketing tool – it’s the first item in the company’s list of cultural operating principles.
As a second-year titan, Smith said he has realized that owning a company is more than just being its leader. “It’s more about nurturing others and helping people in their roles to do their best every day,” he said. “The only way I’ve found to get the best out of people is to have their trust that I’m a leader worth following.”
For his boundless energy to fuel his passions and the passions of his team, Smith has been named a Titan 100 for the second year.
