Gaining acceptance from regulators and the marketplace
By Dan Rafter
It’s no secret to Laurie Honigford: Companies can gain true customer loyalty from their erosion control clients by developing new products that solve existing, and often frustrating, problems.
Solving problems is the key. It’s what drives companies that manufacture erosion control products—everything from mats to silt fence to fiber matrix to blankets—to constantly update their product lines. Some updates are merely improvements to an existing product. Others are more complex, with company engineers designing entirely new erosion control technology.
But the goal behind all of these improvements, tweaks, and introductions is the same: to eliminate whatever erosion problems highway department engineers, contractors, builders, developers, or city planners are facing.
“The quickest way to customers’ hearts is to solve their problems,” says Honigford, executive director of the Erosion Control Technology Council, a trade group serving erosion control professionals. “If they can develop a product that will solve a problem, they’re certainly going to do it. They’ll hear an engineer say something like, ‘We always encounter X when we’re out in the field. What can you do about it?’ That’s what starts the wheels turning.”
The erosion control industry is one that’s constantly evolving. The pros who battle erosion for municipalities, commercial clients, and homeowners are always looking for new products to make their jobs easier. They’re constantly searching for new technology that will eliminate the serious erosion problems they face. And even though there seems to be an unlimited number of products on the market now, that doesn’t mean that erosion control specialists aren’t hungry for more.
But introducing these new products isn’t an easy job. Before an erosion control product hits the market, its manufacturer must first put it through a grueling series of tests—both at onsite facilities and at third-party, independent laboratories—to make sure it is field-worthy. And that’s just one hurdle new products face: Manufacturers also study whether the product is truly needed, whom it will serve, whether it will be accepted by the regulatory community that sometimes lists specific products to be used, and whether its potential sales will offset the cost to develop it. Will it work in all regions of the country, or will it perform well only in arid conditions? Is it meeting a need faced by all erosion control specialists or only by those working in cold climates? How can the product be best marketed to make sure it reaches a wide enough audience, and will states be willing to include the new item in their specifications?
These are all questions and challenges manufacturers must meet before introducing a new erosion control product.
“It requires major expenses and a significant investment to bring something new to the industry,” Honigford says. “That’s why manufacturers have to be so cautious in what they pursue.”
With all the challenges—including a market that might be reluctant to try something new—it’s amazing that any new products ever hit the market. But they do, and product-development specialists from three manufacturers who specialize in erosion control spoke with Erosion Control about the process of developing new technologies. It’s a long and complicated process, but one that’s critical to the continued growth of an industry.
Jumping the Gates
Based in Buffalo Grove, IL, Profile Products produces a wide range of erosion control products, including both hydraulically applied and rolled blankets.
At any given time, the company has about 20 or so products being developed in its research and development department. Most years, Profile will release two new products—sometimes ones that improve on an existing product, but often completely new items.
Getting products from the idea stage to clients’ hands, though, is far from a simple process. The company uses what its officials call gates, and products have to make it through all of these gates before they hit the market, says Marc Theisen, Profile Products’ director of business development.
The first gate? Products must make it past the discovery stage. This is when someone at Profile comes up with a new idea for an erosion control product. The members of Profile Products’ research and development committee then bat about the idea, making sure that whatever product they are considering will meet clients’ needs and fit into the rest of the company’s product line.
If an idea makes it through this gate, it then has to make business sense, another hurdle. This is when officials at Profile analyze the offerings of their competitors to make sure that a new idea won’t simply duplicate a rival’s product that has already gained a foothold in the market. They also estimate how expensive it will be to develop, market, and create the product. If that figure is too high, and if expected profits from the potential product can’t cover it, then the product doesn’t make business sense, and it will probably die at this stage.
“If that looks good, then we go on. If not, we shoot it in the head,” Theisen says. “We kill it right there. We have various gates that we either come through or we shoot the new ideas in the head right there.”
Once a need has been established and company officials determine that a new product idea makes good business sense, the real fun begins. Engineers start building prototypes of the new products that the company can then test.
“This is an important spot,” Theisen says. “Things get a lot more expensive at this stage. We can’t ever introduce a new product if we don’t understand how it’s going to perform. We need to test these products to make sure they’re going to do what we want them to do.”
Initial testing takes place at the testing site at Profile’s research facility. If these tests are promising, officials then OK third-party tests, usually conducted at a university or outside laboratory.
Testing can be interesting, and rugged. Erosion control products go through rainfall simulators to make sure they can keep soil in place during the heaviest of storms. Typically, the simulators dump 5 inches of rainfall in an hour. That, of course, is an extremely fierce storm, one that most products will never have to combat. But if a blanket or mat can stop erosion during such a large-scale storm, it will certainly be able to handle smaller rains.
Another test measures how well blankets can handle hydraulic erosion conditions. Engineers create a channel and discharge large quantities of waver over the product. The blankets are tested to handle various water velocity levels and channel depths so engineers can measure how much sheer stress a product can handle.
This is just the beginning of the testing process. Engineers also do vegetative tests to see how well Profile’s products can grow vegetation, something that is extremely important for municipalities or commercial clients who are interested in creating an erosion control solution that is aesthetically pleasing.
If a product passes all this testing, it is then ready to go through a final gate, what Theisen calls the go-to-launch gate. This is when Profile executives decide when to introduce their new product. Often, the company will introduce its new products during the International Erosion Control Association’s annual conference. That way, the company can get information about it directly into the hands of the industry’s workers.
And after this, when the product is released into the market, it’s time to wait—often anxiously.
“Once the product is put into the marketplace, that’s when the real tests take place,” Theisen says. “That’s when you find out how it performs under real conditions. How well is it embraced by the distributors, by the end users? Was it really that great of an idea? You have to keep assessing that as time goes on.”
Launching a new product is never an easy task. Usually, it takes Profile Products anywhere from six months to two years, depending on the complexity of the new product being developed.
In 2005, Profile introduced Terra-Matrix, a stabilized fiber matrix product. The product went through all the traditional steps and has performed well in the field. But the hard reality of developing new products is this: Even if a product does what its manufacturers promise, and even if it fills a need, there is no guarantee that the erosion control community will embrace it.
Developers, contractors, and erosion control specialists potentially face serious fines and penalties if the products they use don’t work properly. The cost of failure in this business is high. Because of this, erosion control experts aren’t always eager to work with a new product that, they feel, hasn’t been tested thoroughly enough.
Because of this, it’s important for manufacturers to explain their new products as thoroughly as they can, Theisen says—exactly how they work, what problems they solve, and how efficiently they operate.
“We usually work on new brochures, additions to our Web site, case histories, a wide spectrum of ways to get the message out about our new products,” he says. “Our field guys are out there knocking on doors. If we’ve done all our homework with our marketing messages, if we’ve done all the proper testing, and if we have a compelling message and a compelling reason for people to try the product, then we’ve done our job. Really, introducing a new product is a process, not an event.”
Understanding Their Needs
Before adding to their product line, the erosion control specialists at North American Green, based in Evansville, IN, spend months studying their potential market. It’s the only way the company can guarantee that its clients will actually use the new products it makes.
Company officials talk regularly with their distributors about the problems that their clients would like to solve. They then develop products that will tackle these problems.
“We always try to keep in mind what the customers’ needs are,” says Gabe Weaver, manager of new products and technology development at North American Green. “We take the customers’ needs and then we go and develop a product to meet those needs. It’s not, ‘Here is our product, customer; go use it.’”
These early talks are also important in helping engineers at the company determine how much of a product they’ll need to make at one time. It makes little sense to introduce a product that will take too long to build to meet the demand that end users have for it.
“If demand is higher than supply, nobody likes that scenario,” Weaver says.
The analysis phase at North American Green also includes lengthy discussions about the reach of potential new products. Some products may be desirable to erosion control specialists working in the southern portion of the United States but next to useless to those battling fierce cold up north.
Just because a product won’t serve every portion of the country, through, doesn’t mean that the engineers will scrap it. It will affect, though, how much of the new product the company will produce and how it’ll market and promote the product.
Of course, even if a company does all this right and doesn’t skip any steps, it’s no guarantee that a product will take off once it’s introduced.
“What I’ve concluded is that it’s easy to think of ideas and solutions,” Weaver says. “But it’s very time-consuming and detailed and drawn out to actually make the new solution. There are so many behind-the-scenes things that people don’t realize. If you want to make a new product, these things don’t just happen overnight. There is machinery involved. There are trial runs. A product may work great during the trial runs, or it may not. Then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.”
Like other companies, North American Green has to actively promote the benefits of its new products to encourage contractors and state officials to take a chance on them. Some states, though, are always reluctant to approve a new product.
This isn’t surprising. Members of the public—property owners and concerned citizens—are more aware of the harm that excessive erosion can cause to their streams, rivers, and public lands. States want to protect these same areas and avoid criticism from the public, and they are often reluctant to place the fate of environmentally sensitive areas with erosion control products that lack a lengthy track record.
Some states, though, are more willing to offer test projects to companies like North American Green. These projects allow everyone involved to see exactly how a product performs under real-life conditions.
“Then you can hear from contractors that a product was easy to install or it wasn’t,” Weaver says. “They may tell you that there were some problems. On the flip side, they may say that it was easy to install and it did work great. When, say, departments of transportation get feedback like that, they are usually very amenable to working with your product.”
Constant Development
Mat Inc. offers solid proof that the erosion control industry is always evolving. The Floodwood, MN–based manufacturer of the Soil Guard erosion control system and several wood fiber mulches plans to introduce four new products in 2007.
What products? Officials at the company won’t say—some of the products are too close to coming out—but you can bet that each of them went through the same rigorous testing procedure.
“It’s never a short process, bringing something new to the market,” says Tom Rich, marketing director with Mat Inc. “How long it takes does depend on the kind of product being introduced. With something that is brand new—there’s nothing else out there like it—it could easily take up to a couple of years. That depends on what the product is, whether there’s something revolutionary about it.”
Mat Inc. comes out with new products every year, Rich says. The company tries to pursue products that fit neatly into what the company already offers.
“If it’s a product where we have a good vision of how it will fit into our company’s product line, if we think it will fill a need, then it generally will be something we pursue,” Rich says.
To get to that point, though, engineers must first convince the company’s board of directors to release the money needed to develop the new product or improve an existing piece of equipment. Doing this isn’t necessarily an easy task. Engineers must first show that there is a need for the product, that end users will accept the new item, that the costs to produce the product won’t be too high, and that the product isn’t so complex that the company would struggle to make enough of it efficiently and quickly.
“Until we get to the point where the board has to approve the product, has to release the monies, we’re pretty much just in the dreaming and scheming phase,” Rich says. “Up until board approval, it’s mostly just chatter. This is an important test, though. If you can’t convince the board of the worth of a product, how can you convince the market?”
To save money on the back end of the production cycle, officials make sure to do their research regarding the viability of a potential new product. This means talking with the companies that distribute the company’s products, checking with Mat’s own sales team who are closest to the market, and making the rounds at trade shows. These avenues point out exactly what problems erosion control specialists face in the field and what products they’re looking for to handle these challenges.
Product development, though, is never an exact science, even when companies do all their homework. There are times when Mat Inc. engineers come up with a product idea that does solve an existing problem that erosion control pros are facing and that can be built fairly efficiently. But the product still isn’t right for the company. For example, maybe the perfect solution to a problem would come from a chemical-based new product.
That’s outside Mat’s usual range of offerings. The company specializes in mulches, not chemicals. But if the product idea is a good one, Mat Inc. may persuade other companies in the industry—which Mat officials consider friends—to develop the product.
“We can’t be all things to all businesses,” Rich says.
Honigford, from the Erosion Control Technology Council, says that she expects the industry to continue to develop new products, even with the many challenges involved in doing so.
She doesn’t expect, though, that doing so will become any easier.
“To be honest, the people in this industry don’t latch onto new products too easily,” she says. “There is a misconception out there that engineers are cutting edge. That’s not necessarily true. They want to see validation that a product is going to work. They are often designing for critical design components, so they can’t afford to have anything fail. They have to work in the footprints they already have. They are cautious about these things.”
Dan Rafter is a technical writer based in Illinois.
EC - September/October 2007
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