Rick Bucher wasn’t looking for a new job when a headhunter called around 2009. The materials science engineer had a good gig already, innovating and developing medically implantable devices as a business leader at W.L. Gore & Associates Inc.
“Trust me on this company,” the headhunter told Bucher, “it’s a medium-sized company in the Lehigh Valley called Victaulic.”
Today, Bucher is the CEO of the Forks Township company, a 53-year-old who rose through the ranks over the last dozen years at Victaulic and, on Jan. 31, succeeded John F. Malloy in the top job. Victaulic, a producer of mechanical pipe-joining systems, employs 4,500 people worldwide, including about 1,200 in the Lehigh Valley — making it one of the region’s largest manufacturing employers.
At the start of the pandemic, things looked a little uncertain at Victaulic as the world’s construction sites idled. But the company was able to get through it, something Bucher attributes to Victaulic’s employees and its privately held ownership that allows the firm to take a long-term view rather than thinking about quarterly results.
And now, demand has roared back, so much so that a foundry Victaulic purchased in February in Lawrenceville, Tioga County, is ramping up faster than expected. Bucher said Victaulic now has 100 employees at that facility — a former Waupaca Foundry Inc. plant that closed in August — and anticipates growing payroll there to 200 people by the end of this year. In the Lehigh Valley, the company has completed a 400,000-square-foot manufacturing building in Lower Nazareth Township and is moving equipment into the facility. About 125 people now work in the Lower Nazareth building, which should grow to 300 by the end of 2021.
A major focus for Victaulic remains innovation — something Bucher recalls questioning back when that headhunter called all those years ago.
“I had never heard of Victaulic, so I went to the website and I saw a picture of a coupling, I saw a picture of a fitting, and then it said ‘innovation’ at the top,” Bucher remembers. “And I’ve always been in innovation, and I looked at it and said, ‘That’s not innovative. I know what innovation is, that’s not innovative. How can that be innovative?’ “
So he searched and read through some of Victaulic’s patents, and his mind started to change. Follow that up with interviews with Victaulic executives, who consistently stressed the importance of innovation to the company’s success, and Bucher was in.
“That was key,” he said. “I would have never gone to a company that wasn’t led by innovation.”
Since Bucher joined — his first Victaulic role was vice president of product development — the company said he has helped grow its number of issued patents to more than 4,250 globally while the research and development organization has doubled in size.
Bucher spoke to The Morning Call recently about his background, his leadership style and where Victaulic is headed. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Q: So your early background is in materials science. What is that, and how’d you get into it?
A: I knew I wanted to be an engineer, so I was thinking aerospace engineering. My father, who was an engineer as well, he said, “Do you know what an aerospace engineer does?” I’m like, “Yeah, you design a plane.” He said, “No, you design a little tiny part of the plane. Is that really what you want to do?”
So that led me to materials, which materials engineering is basically how you select the right material for the job at hand for performance reasons, for cost reasons, etc. So it’s a blend of mechanical engineering and chemical engineering, kind of all mashed together, and so I was choosing between mechanical and chemical, and I said, “Materials, I can do both at the same time.”
Q: All your prior roles here, did it groom you to take over as CEO in January?
A: It’s given me broad exposure to the company. One thing John Malloy has done was his executive team works very closely together, so we’re in meetings where we’re talking about sales, we’re talking about finance, we’re talking about operations and new product development, so that gives me the ability to really see all aspects of the company.
I think those relationships are key because working collaboratively and working cross-functionally is really critical and the time spent with our customers, really critical to understand what they do. All those experiences are going to be critical for my long-term success.
Q: Is a focus on innovation a big part of your leadership style, or how would you describe how you lead?
A: Innovation is absolutely critical to that. I’m as far as you can get from a micromanager as possible. I believe in you hire really, really smart people and you get everyone aligned and then you get out of their way.
What I learned even before Gore and my experience at Rice [University] and my experience at Virginia Tech, I like working in collaborative groups, empowered groups, where we sit down at a table and check your title at the door and make sure that we have a robust discussion about who has the best idea. That’s how you really innovate, and that’s how you really develop people.
Q: With collaboration, did Victaulic think about the future of the office during the pandemic?
A: We are a very in-office, collaborative culture. We believe in the value of running into each other in the hallway and saying, “You know, I was thinking of this and can you help me with that?” That’s hard to do remotely. And so, right now, our engineering department, which is heavily focused on innovation, probably 90% are in the office because they want to be in the office.
But we’ve realized in what we have all gone through and are going through that our employees have really stepped up and folks who could work from home, last year especially when it was really bad and even now, they’ve proven that they can get their jobs done. So we’ve communicated that we’re going to have a hybrid work environment, and we’re going to be flexible.
There’s going to be some jobs where you can’t do it from home. Our manufacturing folks can’t work from home. There’s going to be some jobs where 100% of their time can be from home. That’s going to be the minority by far. We’re not being prescriptive and saying, “Everybody’s got to fly to this paradigm.”
Q: Are couplings still the company’s primary product that drives innovation off of that, or what do you want people to know about Victaulic?
A: I see Victaulic as a solutions company. Obviously, people know us for our couplings, but we have 100,000 products that we produce, from couplings to valves. The expansion barrels used in northern Canada in oil and gas, and you imagine a pipeline on the ground in cold Canada and you’re pumping hot fluids through it. That pipeline’s going to grow and contract, and so we produce a product — some of them are as a big as a car — that allow that expansion and contraction to happen.
We produce 12-foot diameter products for city water systems. So you bury a pipeline in the ground and a pipeline is pretty rigid, but the ground is moving, it’s settling different. So dynamic settlement joints that allow that pipeline to move, literally that fit on the back of an 18-wheeler, that Victaulic product sits on the back of an 18-wheeler. To a fire protection system with a complete system that if there was a fire in this room, it would put the fire out, the computer would still operate and all the electronics will still operate. We would be fine. That’s used in applications like data centers or control rooms for an industrial facility. Hospitals.
Again, all those come from those customer relationships and understanding what their challenges are and coming up with a unique solution to solve those challenges. Our vision statement is we bring productivity and confidence to every construction site around the world. We’re working on probably 30-40 new product development products at any time.
Q: As a privately held company, do you disclose sales numbers or can you describe recent sales?
A: One of the benefits is we are privately held, and so we don’t disclose a lot of information. But in generality, this time last year, we were concerned. There was a lot of concern. Construction sites around the world were shutting down. Some still are in certain pockets, and we didn’t know what was going to happen.
Fortunately, the end of the year, sales came back really, really strong. And so we were off a little bit last year, but again, privately held company, long-term view, we didn’t have a single layoff, we didn’t have a single furlough, we didn’t have any reduction in pay or things like that. In fact, last year we had a pay increase at the end of the year, because we really appreciated how everybody reacted and went the extra mile to make sure that we continue to be successful.
And fortunately into this year, the building and construction industry is booming, so we’re having a really, really nice bounce back from where we were last year.
Q: We spoke with John Malloy in 2017, and he said then that 80% of what Victaulic sells in the United States is produced in the United States. And he wanted to get that closer to 100% in the coming years. Where does that stand?
A: We strongly believe in manufacturing close to our customers. It shortens your supply chains, you can be more responsive to your customers and so that’s why we have facilities in Poland, that’s why we facilities in China to serve those regions of the world. And I’d say that dedication to manufacturing close to your customers is just as strong, if not stronger, than it’s ever been.
We believe in manufacturing in the United States. We believe in manufacturing in the Lehigh Valley, and we’re proud to be a Lehigh Valley-based company. Now, we obviously have to be competitive, so we make significant investments in our facilities here in automation and how do we continue to produce locally and do that efficiently and competitively and employ people in the Lehigh Valley. That’s really, really important for us.
Q: What’s the future hold for you? Do you hope you never work for another company?
A: I would love to retire from Victaulic. I believe in becoming part of a team and dedicating myself to the success of that team, so I’m not looking to use this as a stepping stone to go some place else. I’m using this because I really respect our owners, respect our board, respect the colleagues I work with. I only want to do everything I can to help Victaulic be more and more successful as long as I can.
Morning Call reporter Jon Harris can be reached at 484-280-2866 or at jon.harris@mcall.com.
Rick Bucher
Title: CEO of Victaulic
Age: 53
Home: Lower Saucon Township
Background: Bucher received his bachelor and master’s degrees from Rice University in materials science and engineering and then got his doctorate in materials engineering science from Virginia Tech. Before Victaulic, he worked for 15 years at W.L. Gore & Associates, a manufacturer of technologically advanced composite materials. He joined Victaulic in 2009 as vice president of product development and in 2016 became executive vice president of technology and product development. Bucher was appointed Victaulic chief operating officer in June 2019 and became president in April 2020. He became CEO in January.
