Longtime Michigan City Resident Paul Konrady is now a co-owner of his family’s Portage-based Konrady Plastics company that distributes and machines plastic. After graduating from John Carroll University, Konrady worked for several years on his own. When he retired, Konrady’s father, Bernie Konrady, came to him to see if he would want to work for the family company.
“I always knew I would like to work for the family business, and I was excited about the inside sales opportunity,” said Konrady. “I enjoyed doing sales. I'm pretty relationship focused, establishing relationships with customers. It was a good opportunity to get my feet wet and learn a lot about what we do at Konrady Plastics.”
Konrady’s father founded the company in 1981. Konrady says that his enjoyment for sales is something he gets from his father.
“I like to help customers and build relationships,” said Konrady. “That's always been something I enjoyed. I probably get a lot of that from my father, he and I are very similar on the sales side of things.”
His father is now out of the day-to-day operations but still provides his kids with help running the business.
“He definitely is a good person to lean on for advice,” said Konrady. "He has been a great sounding board, and he helped us with some big picture decisions, whether it's buying capital equipment or working with the bank or an attorney.”
In his 13 years with the company, Konrady moved around between sales and purchasing and inventory management. Now, Konrady gets to be a co-owner of Konrady Plastics with his younger sister, Leah Konrady, who brings her own high level management experience. With her experience, she frees his schedule up to focus on more of the day-to-day operations of Konrady Plastics.
“It's great to work with my father and my sister,” said Konrady. “We have a good working relationship and respect one another. We've also got so many great co-workers, I am just so proud of everyone at Konrady Plastics.”
Konrady and his sister took over management in January of 2020. Since then, they have grown sales by 33%, and with that growth, they will be able to have more job opportunities for the area. Konrady Plastics also helped out the community with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic while using the opportunity to grow.
“We were very heavily involved in making sneeze guards at checkout points,” said Konrady. “We did all the sneeze guards for Family Express, so every Family Express has our sneeze guards at their checkout counters. Strack & Van Til also had the barriers up at all the checkout lanes and all their grocery stores.”
Getting to make these products for the community was a great point of pride for the company. It matched its slogan: “working to build something good.” The company under Konrady’s leadership also has created things for the community like wheelchair accessibility products and firefighting equipment.
“We felt a great sense of service to be able to supply these barriers to the community to help protect individuals from the virus,” said Konrady. “There was a lot of gratitude, and it just really feels good that we are contributing to your personal protection equipment during the pandemic for people in the community.”
Outside of work, Konrady and his wife Megan have three kids all ages 5 years old or younger. He enjoys golfing and snowboarding. He also grew up surfing a lot with his father.