When Rick Hudson graduated from Georgia Tech with an industrial management degree, he knew that some day he wanted to own an independent industrial distributorship. It's a good bet that few college graduates are that specific about their future plans, but the engineering courses that Hudson took underscored his desire to sell technical products to industrial customers.

After college, Hudson worked for a rubber seal manufacturer for seven years, then for a polyurethane manufacturer for four years, where he worked in sales, mostly with distributors and OEMs.

"I'm a salesman first, but the engineering involved in special products like those we sell is what drew me to seals and O-rings," he says.

In 1980, Hudson made his college dream a reality when he founded R.L. Hudson & Co., a seal distributor headquartered in Tulsa, Okla.

R.L. Hudson distributes seals and O-rings to OEM customers across the country. The company also designs and engineers seals and manufactures seal products from a wide variety of materials. OEMs use fluid seals and O-rings to build many consumer and industrial products. The company's sales are about evenly divided between standard and special products.

"In any hardware store, where you see lawnmowers, leaf blowers and power saws, chances are we supply the O-rings and seals in the engines and components of those products," Hudson says. The seal is one of the fundamental machine parts, Hudson notes, and few people recognize their unique, engineered characteristics.

Many of the products R.L. Hudson supplies are far more application-specific and complex than the round rubber seals used in small motors. Hudson and his sales staff depend on their knowledge of the forces that attack seals under many conditions.

For example, in one application for polyurethane — underwater seismic-sounding air cannons — extremely high air pressure is blasted through a gun outlet, firing every five milliseconds. Seals between parts of the cannon absorb a portion of every blast.

Under such severe pressure, rubber is infiltrated molecularly by the forced gas and can become distorted. A standard rubber gasket quickly gets blown apart due to "equilibrium shift," the violent, instantaneous distortion of its shape and the resulting discharge as the gas escapes. According to Hudson, the result is catastrophic failure, called "explosive decompression," or implosion upon the escape of the gas.

Rubber seals cannot recover from the shock of explosive decompression, but polyurethane gaskets have the remarkable ability to resist violent shattering from these forces.

"Polyurethane is an elastomer, or a plastic that specializes in "stretch-and-return" characteristics. Polyurethane O-rings resist the fracturing energy generated by cycles of gases escaping and permeating," Hudson says.

There have been materials upgrades and process improvements in fluid sealing, but what has really changed in the last 15 years, according to Hudson, is the distribution industry itself. When Hudson began in distribution, most seal distributors had a primary line and worked mainly with that manufacturer, he says. In recent years, distributors have had to diversify to thrive.

"We consider ourselves independent and we represent several companies. That allows us to best serve our customers," he says.

One of the services Hudson supplies and finds is most vital to customers today is engineering and design. His sales personnel are trained to be technical designers and sometimes replace engineers who have been laid off at many plants due to downsizing, he says.

"Many companies have cut back on their engineering staffs and that's one critical area we pursue," Hudson says. "We are so good with design that we have become their source to develop plastic, rubber and even some metal products for companies."

Mercury Marine makes stern-drive and inboard powerboat engines in Stillwater, Okla. According to senior buyer Roger Mistak, Hudson submitted a quote for the company's O-ring business about six years ago. They got the business — an annual order worth $60,000.

Today, Mercury buys O-rings, molded plastic parts and hoses and machine parts totaling about $1 million a year. Orders with Hudson have steadily increased, because Hudson can quickly design and deliver products as necessary, he says.

"Mainly, we talk to Connie Baker, the inside account executive. She really has the pulse of what we need and when, and keeps deliveries moving," Mistak says. "They have about three months' supply of our stock items and ship over 95 percent on time. We generally have a one-week to eight-week supply [of various parts] on hand here."

Roger Stair, vice president of operations, handles sales functions for R.L. Hudson. He has been involved in the innovative engineering process that has made the company a sealing industry leader.

Stair's sons were in the lawn-mowing business, and Stair helped maintain the mowers. One day, he saw that gas was leaking from a fuel container and determined that the problem was due to a leaky, flimsy seal. He contacted the container manufacturer.

"We developed a design change for the seal, along with a more fuel-resistant compound. After extensive testing, the manufacturer started using 250,000 seals a week," Stair says.

In another case, Hudson engineer Frank Horn worked with a gasoline engine manufacturer to develop a gasket that helps keep plastic intake manifolds from "creeping," the tendency to move due to vibration. Rigid tightening of the manifolds causes interference.

"Manifolds tend to creep. Our solution is to modify the customer's tooling to place a rubber gasket under the assembly to prevent creep," Hudson says.

According to Stair, engineering such a solution required determining the customer's ability to assemble the parts once a new gasket was developed. The solution must be cost-effective, easily integrated into the existing manufacturing process and readily meet any safety requirements.

"If his costs go way up because he can't mount the piece in his assembly line, we really haven't solved the problem. It is one thing to have a product, but it must be easily integrated into the customer's processes," Stair says, adding that products like small-engine consumer items are in highly price-competitive markets.

It's rare in distribution that 50 percent of one's business is for custom-made products. But that's the case in Hudson's market.

"We select customers we want to work with, then we're out on the line at the factories every day. As our acceptance from a technical standpoint has grown, we developed a nationwide base of customers," Hudson says. "We invested a lot of money in our company so we could work with large customers. We were one of the first, for instance, to use CAD systems. It is imperative that we invest in the latest technology because so much we do is first-time applications."

Working with the largest customers has meant implementing the latest quality assurance programs. R.L. Hudson is ISO 9001 certified and will be QS9000 certified this year. The company has four quality assurance employees. They provide failure analysis and production part approvals. The quality department can provide quality documentation on every part.

In 1999, Hudson planned to build a $3.5 million, 35,000-square-foot headquarters building in Tulsa. When he began to see some worrisome economic signs, he pulled the project off the table.

"It wound up being the best decision I ever made," he says. "By mid-1999 I saw a softening in our markets. We had a trailer manufacturer who went from building 10 a day to one a day. Boat building, agriculture, construction — they are all down 25 to 30 percent," he says.

Business has held steady during the downturn of the last two years at about $15 million per year. But it certainly hasn't caused the need for adding the kind of capacity that facility would have represented, he says.

Instead, Hudson decentralized warehousing and has three satellites that represent lower financial burdens on the company: Greer, S.C., Little Rock, Ark., and a satellite location in Tulsa. He has sales offices in Akron and Chicago. The company has nine outside salespeople.

Hudson expects his customers' sales to grow later this year, and in turn, his own revenue begin to grow again.

"In 2002, I'm confident to forecast over $17 million revenue," Hudson says.

Doing so will depend upon ever increasing demands from customers for better quality and service at the best price, and engineering again plays a key role. R.L. Hudson is a company whose business depends on the accuracy of its products. It comes naturally, then, to Hudson to work on the accuracy of his orders and on-time shipments. According to his records, suppliers ship to him 70 percent on time, but his company has a 98.5 percent on-time shipping rate to customers.

Stocking enough special products and ordering well in advance are obvious ways to stay ahead of the stocking game. Hudson uses a new computer system to anticipate customers' needs and recommend stocking levels.

"The greatest sin at R.L. Hudson is to be late with a delivery," Hudson says. "I don't think we've ever caused a line to shut down. We do what it takes to meet or exceed delivery schedules."

Hudson also has a newsmagazine, Solutions, which is published in-house four times a year. It describes products and introduces new lines, and features technical sections, quality updates about seals and materials, and often an employee profile.

The publication follows Hudson's philosophy that the more a customer knows about products and producers, the better it is for the supply chain. He is doing business now in Asia, and has produced technical information in Chinese.

Hudson is going into markets where he knows he can best serve customers through engineering and innovation.

"We have always tried every year to improve our company from a technical and engineering standpoint," he says. "We stay ahead of our industry at every possible turn."