Josh Stearns, a local writer for South Sound Business Magazine based in Tacoma, Washington, contacted us in early 2021 as he was researching what local businesses were doing to maintain workplace culture. We are honored that he found portions of our conversation to be of value and included us in an article with local business leaders who are being intentional in these areas as well. 

Josh also interviewed: 

• Adam West, Tacoma Comedy Club and Grit City Breakfast, whom we had on South Sound Connection XXX
• Brian Forth, Site Crafting, Inc. 
• Don Morrison, TractionSpace
• Tolena Thorburn, Milgard Windows & Doors
• Nancy Johnson, Metro Parks Tacoma

In a segment of the article Josh titled, "Creating a Positive Impact Internally, Externally," he said:

• Socktember

Jon Isaacson, vice president of operations for All American Restoration Services in Tacoma, which repairs homes and businesses after fire or water damage, said he and fellow employees are fortunate to work in an essential business and take pride helping people recover in the safest way possible. They’re dedicated to that mission, and that’s rewarding. They’ve also tried to be involved in positive community efforts, including a sock drive in September to help people in the community who are less fortunate. The business reached out to companies it works with, plus some competitors, to see who could collect the most new socks, part of a drive called “Socktember.” Collectively, the teams — including The Contents Specialists, Merit Construction, 3 Kings Environmental, and Home with Kelsey Isaacson — collected more than 5,500 pairs, he said. Socks were delivered to the Tacoma Rescue Mission and other organizations, and recipients’ gratitude was rewarding for teams who collaborated, he said. “
We did something good, and it made an impact, a very positive impact,” Isaacson said. More broadly, he noted Pierce County’s community efforts to unite during hard times and noted hashtags like #supportlocal and #lovelocal to support local businesses and keep people working. Isaacson tries to promote that through his The DYOJO podcast at thedyojo.com. Socktember represented the idea that, “It only takes a small spark to get a fire going,” Isaacson said.

• South Sound Connection

Similarly, Isaacson has a podcast called South Sound Connection to highlight local entrepreneurs, businesses, and community efforts, and serves as a sounding board for other positive efforts in the community that people can rally around.  “We want Tacoma to thrive; if Tacoma does well, I think all of our businesses will do well, collectively, and as we continue to support local companies,” he said.

On Tuesday, May 4, 2021, we will be discussing "Made in the South Sound" Premier Media Group, with president Josh Dunn. You can participate LIVE via YouTube at 9am PST. 

South Sound Connection (SSC) LIVE launched Season 2 on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 at 9am PST 

SSC LIVE is brought to you by:

• The DYOJO Podcast (Tacoma, WA)
• All American Restoration Services (Tacoma, WA)

Secret Sauce for Keeping Good Employees - Made in Tacoma, Rite in the Rain - SSC LIVE 015

GUEST
Ryan McDonald, Rite in the Rain (Tacoma, WA)

Ryan joins us to discuss:

• What it means to be "Made in the South Sound"
• How Rite in the Rain (RITR) has grown a thriving local business in Tacoma, WA
• The value of taking care of your employees - RITR has several employees with 20-30 plus years of service in the organization
• Taking on new challenges and adapting to the market. As we discussed with Lisa Lavender in part 1 of 6 of our series Benchmarks in Growth, "More is not always more." Rapid growth can be dangerous for a company if the right mindset and habits are not implemented. 
• Lessons learned from 2020 that the RITR team is applying moving forward.

​
READ MORE on the history of Rite in the Rain in an article published by The DYOJO following a tour of the RITR facility and an interview in early 2020 with Ryan. 

South Sound Connection (SSC) presented by The DYOJO Podcast and All American Restoration Services (AARES).

• All American Restoration Services is a general contractor based in Tacoma, WA that provides insurance repairs services for clients throughout the South Sound.
• The DYOJO is a business coaching service based in Tacoma, WA and produces The DYOJO Podcast - helping you shorten your DANG learning curve for professional development.

See our past episodes as well as our roster of local guests for SSC LIVE Season 2 "Made in the South Sound".  

From deep within the 22 million acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest emerges the unique story of a Tacoma based waterproof paper manufacturer. 

If you live in Tacoma, you have some perspective on how massive the Port of Tacoma operation is. If you are not from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) it likely isn’t something that is on the forefront of your awareness. What both groups may be surprised to know is that this city of just over 190,000 people is home to the “Pacific Gateway” for trade between Asia and the United States. 

• Annually 52.1 billion dollars runs through the 90 year old trade port including 41.7 million board feet of logs. 
• Tacoma is the third largest cargo gate in North America with nearly 26 million tons passing through in any given year. 
• During World War II, 74 warships were constructed in the Todd Pacific Shipyards

Washington State is renowned for its vast natural resources, and the PNW hosts over 22 million acres of forest with timber playing a key role in commerce for the region. Against the backdrop of the end of World War I, and the excitement of Tacoma’s growth potential, arose many opportunities related to the timber industry. Not coincidentally, within this paradigm emerges the focal point of our story, one Mr. Jerry L. Darling and his secret sauce for waterproofing paper. 

An Opportunity in Every Challenge: RITR 1.0 

If you were a timber surveyor in the early 1900’s and needed to keep notes of your observations, what would you use? There were no cell phones or iPads and if it rained your notes would be destroyed or distorted. While this may not be a problem that many readers can identify with, in the Pacific Northwest, where timber at that time was thriving and rain is abundant, writing in the rain presented a real obstacle that could affect your livelihood. As the product has evolved, so has the market, as it turns out many professions require documentation while working in adverse conditions. Rite in the Rain professionals include land surveyors, engineers, first responders, skilled trades people and military personnel.  

Jerry Darling is a native of Raymond, Washington, born in Willapa Harbor. He was known as an outdoors man who had many interests. Early in his career, Jerry worked in his fathers milk and soda bottling and oyster shucking business. Jerry heard about the challenges timber professionals had with keeping notes while in the woods from Alec Polson of the Polson Lumber Company. Entrepreneurs see an opportunity in every challenge and the secret sauce began stirring in Jerry’s brain after that conversation. 

According to his long time partner, Lloyd Silver, “Jerry was a feisty guy, about the size of Jack LaLanne, and almost as fanatic about his fitness.” For those who don’t know, Jack was one of the early fitness celebrities and bodybuilders, hosting his own show from 1953 to 1985. Jerry was also, “A very proficient sailor, skippering (sic) for many years on his cousin Rad Pratsch’s ‘Flying Cloud’, and scoring major points in many regattas in the thirties and forties.” 

To give the reader an idea of the impact of lumber to the area, “In 1907, Tacoma's 135 lumber handlers stowed 202,559,628 board feet, a record that has never been equaled. Throughout the globe Tacoma became known as The Lumber Capital of the World.” Lumber and the rise of the Port of Tacoma created a positive economic impact for local jobs, the growth of the region and the import/export capacity of the nation. 

In the early 1900’s, the leading innovation for timber notes was called a Tally Board which was nothing more than the smooth side of a wooden roofing shingle that was painted. Jerry’s first entrepreneurial venture was conceived in 1916 and he connected with a local printer, Harry Buffington. The two worked together to develop a “painted piece of paper” that could oust the cumbersome Tally Board. They worked at developing a waterproofing formula for dipping paper and had launched the first version of Rite in the Rain (RITR). 

The Sauce Sours: Swindled 

Like many young men in that time period, Jerry departed to join the effort of World War I. Unfortunately we were not able to acquire much information about Mr. Darling's service but when he returned from war there was an issue with the business. The details are murky but Jerry returns to find that, “The business had fallen into the hands of stock swindlers,” and Buffington was nowhere to be found. Darling had to start over but he also found the demand for his innovation had risen in the region with the rise of the Port of Tacoma. 

On March 25th of 1921, a steamship, the Edmore, arrived at the newly constructed Pier 1 in the Port of Tacoma. This arrival marked Tacoma’s official entry in the commercial shipping market. Fifty members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) reportedly, “Loaded 600,000 board feet of lumber in record-setting time.” In just 24 hours 25 carloads of lumber were freighted and the proud team sent the Edmore off on its journey to Yokohama, Japan. 

With the relaunch of the business, the JL Darling Corporation’s early partners were Jerry’s wife, Mary, and young son, Peter, all doing their part to stir the sauce to build the family venture. Their production line started as a bicycle driven chain inside their home in Brown’s Point. A brand distinctive of Rite in the Rain emerged as a means of necessity rather than forethought. When the paper came off of the line, the coating gathered at the bottom corner which was subsequently trimmed. By the 1930’s, the Darlings decide to open a shop across the street from their house in Commencement Bay. The new location allowed them to construct longer chains to drive the coating of pre-printed sheets that they were still acquiring from other printers. The secret sauce is slowly gaining steam and Rite in the Rain is becoming a viable business.  

Stirring the Sauce: Rite in the Rain 2.0  
Bill Sny, a local machine shop operator, was recruited in the 1950’s to design and build a Continuous Web Coating Machine to replace the hand dipping process. Upon completion, The Darling Corporation now has the only machine of it’s kind and was the sole company making “waterproof writing paper.” The secret sauce has allowed them to grow to three employees and to offset their reliance on outside printers, Jerry purchased a Multilith offset printing press and a used paper cutter from Weyerhaeuser's print shop. 

By this time the Darling Corporation is producing their Forest line, Engineer forms and bound books. It is during this time, between 1930 and 1950, that we believe Jerry moved the operation into Tacoma with the first known location being a multi-story space shared with Pioneer Printing at the intersection of South 12th and A Streets. Paper products have quite a history within the Pacific Northwest and Jerry was one character in the broader story. Sharing the same location, Jerry would have interacted with a prominent local business owner, Mrs. Phebe A. Howe. Phebe incorporated Pioneer Printing and Bindery Company in 1889 (coincidentally the same year that Washington became a state) with her three sons as stockholders. Mrs. Howe came to the Northwest by way of moving from New York to Walla Walla, Washington in 1877, where she started her career in printing and binding. In 1887 she moved her family to Tacoma and resumed her efforts in the printing business.

For context, and as a quick sidenote, Col. Willam Farrand Prosser, who was appointed by President Hayes as a special agent of the U.S. Department of the Interior for Oregon, Washington and Idaho writes of Pioneer Printing, “Their close attention to business and honorable methods have won for them a large and profitable patronage.” Prosser became a colonel during the Civil War, served in the House of Representatives in Tennessee, moved to the Northwest where he founded the Washington State Historical Society and founded the town of Prosser. 

Lloyd Silver Dips His Toes in The Sauce

In 1958, a local Tacoma salesman named Lloyd Silver enters the story. Lloyd was a big personality and the story goes that he and Jerry had a mutual friend, Bill Gregory, who was also the Darling’s accountant. Bill knew that Darling’s company needed to enter a new phase of growth and at the age of 68 Jerry was thinking about retirement. Mr. Gregory thought that Lloyd would be a good fit to help develop the business. 

Only good things happen when two business minds consume a few lunchtime martinis, right? Jerry offered Lloyd half of the company if he would come aboard and help bring Rite in the Rain into the black. Mr. Silver was named VP in January of 1958 and was President by December of that same year. Lloyd rolled his sleeves up and focused his efforts in expanding the brand. Within a year things were headed in the right direction and Mr. Darling honored his word. In a letter Lloyd composed to recount his recollection of “The Rite in the Rain Story”, he states, “The Darling’s and I hit it off from the beginning and it was a beautiful ‘marriage’ with never a cross-word exchanged or a difference of opinion in all the years of our association.” 

As their production abilities increased so did the notoriety of their product within markets of need. Lloyd’s sales background kicked in and he attended the first trade show that the company had ever been a part of. He built the first water feature to showcase the waterproof properties of their Rite in the Rain product. This feature is similar to those on display at local hardware stores such as McClendon’s. Within five years the business had doubled and Lloyd became a 50% shareholder. 

Lloyd put his artistic abilities to work as well, developing graphics for the initial marketing materials. He began revamping the logo for the company and is reported to have drawn or contributed to the duck logo that was utilized during the 50’s and 60’s. His scripting was instrumental as well and his handwriting served as the print for the logo. You could say the brand was on fire but unfortunately so was their volatile “special paint” which caused three warehouse fires in 1963. Growth and the fire issues led the company to move operations to Port of Tacoma road to a 6,000 square foot warehouse facility in the tide flats in April of 1965. Lloyd and Bill Sny modified their production time and again until a fire in 1968 destroyed their most efficient machine to date. Thankfully insurance proceeds covered the loss and they once again built the contraption from the ground up.  

The Secret Sauce is Strong Partnerships 

In the 70’s, Lloyd invited his sons, Scott and Todd Silver, to join him. The brothers had gone to business school and had started working towards their respective careers. When Lloyd called upon them, the young men saw the same opportunity that he had in 1958. The brothers learned the business and worked to elevate the company to the next level by implementing systems. Todd and Scott Silver ran the day-to-day and purchased their father’s half of Rite in the Rain in 1995. One year later, the brothers were able to purchase the remaining half of the company from Mary and Peter Darling. 

To this day, Todd and Scott still get along and respect each other’s strengths in business. Scott is a numbers guy and worked as a bank examiner for a time after college. He gravitated towards the financial aspects of business including inventory and production. Todd oversaw the sales and marketing development of Rite in the Rain. Their skill sets were complementary and their relationship is intact after years of being in business together. 

Speaking to their business relationship the brothers have said:

• Todd, "I’m Mr. Outside, he’s Mr. Inside. We’ve really morphed together as a good team. Neither is each other’s boss."
• Scott, "We do real well together. Amazingly, for two brothers. I guess we got all our wrestling and tussling out of the way when we were kids.

The secret sauce that Rite in the Rain uses to provide a waterproof coating for their paper has evolved over the years and was not environmentally friendly. When the Silver brothers came onboard, they moved to 100% recycled products, both papers and the plastics used for their covers as well as transitioned their coating to a water-based coating. While it may sound simple, transferring from a solvent based solution to something water-soluble was a significant undertaking. Todd notes, "It’s paint, but with a number of added attributes.” To this day, only six people know what is reverently referred to as the secret formula: the brothers, their dad, the plant manager and two other employees.

Rite in the Rain moved to their current Fife location just on the outskirts of Tacoma around 1996. Initially there were tenants at the current location but as the company grew they began to occupy these offices, especially as shipping and ecommerce took off in the general market. Rite in the Rain is an example of what a company can do when partners recognize each other's strengths and allow each other to operate for the good of moving the mission forward. Jerry recognized his need for Lloyd and empowered him to bring his business savvy to the company while rewarding his efforts with an investment share in the company. When Lloyd’s sons took over the business, the complementary strengths helped usher Rite in the Rain to new levels both internally as well as externally. 

As the company grew the owners were smart about building at a sustainable pace with a goal to minimize their debt burden. Rite in the Rain owns their buildings, machinery and continues to operate from a stable position. Their growth hasn’t been without risk but their capital allowed them to fund their experiments into new markets such as the military outreach which has propelled their growth in the last decade. Even though they exist in a market space that isn’t attractive to most, they built the business to a level where they are on their second tier of investment ownership. Several employees have been with the company over a decade, pressman Jeff Slusher holds the current tenure title having been with RITR for 27 years.The company continues to explore new niche markets including extreme sports and unique businesses including diving where professionals can compose notes while underwater. 


Made in the South Sound Timeline for Rite in the Rain

1916

• Jerry L. Darling worked in his fathers milk and soda bottling and oyster shucking business in Willapa Harbor, Washington
• RITR 1.0 - Jerry connects with local printer, Herbert Buffington, to explore weather treating paper for the timber industry 
• Jerry joins the Navy to serve in WWI

1918

• Jerry returns from service 
• RITR 2.0 - Does not rejoin the prior printer partnership with Buffington but launches a new business selling “wet weather writing paper” as the Darling Corporation (or J.L. Darling, Co.) 
• Working from home in Browns Point, coating paper using bike chain driven system
• Mary Darling noted as the primary manager of operations for the company 
• Operation moves to Pioneer Printing and Bindery (currently Courthouse Square / Post Office) 
• Operation moves to N.P. Banknote Co. (currently The Matador)

1940

• Change from bike chain to web coating, noted as being just as slow as the previous method

1950

• Lloyd Silver hired, becomes VP and then President in 1958
• Lloyd drives marketing, outreach, trade shows, branding and modernizing efforts for the company.
• Duck logo and cursive print adopted as main brand 
• By 1963 Lloyd is a 50% shareholder
• April 1965 move to Port of Tacoma Rd 
• Change from web coating to continuous web coating machine (greatly increased efficiency after the initial engineering kinks were worked out) 
• Print shop experience led to self performing the binding and in-house adaptations of the product which appealed to the markets they were serving 
• Rite in the Rain name change 

1980 

• Partnership with REI to distribute products

1990

• Todd and Scott Silver join the company 
• 1994 brothers buy their dad’s share
• 1995 brothers buy out Darling’s share to become full owners
• 1996 Move operations to Fife location 
• RITR enters the public safety market 

2000

• 2005 Company shifts from oil based coating to water based, fully recyclable, prints with soy based inks and covers are made from 100% post consumer plastic  

• 2008 first sale to private equity firm 
• 2013 60% share sold to CID Capital 
• Military contract with JBLM 

• 2016 Featured in South Sound Magazine for their 100th anniversary 

South Sound Connection (SSC) LIVE - Episode 012 Part B

SSC LIVE is brought to you by The DYOJO Podcast and All American Restoration Services (Tacoma, WA).

Tuesday, February 2, 2021 9am PST - SSC LIVE ​

GUEST 2
Todd McKellips (Tiny Home Guy), Seattle Tiny Homes

On SSC LIVE 012 Part B we discussed:

• Zoning and building challenges for tiny homes as residences
• Obstacles to getting tiny home as solutions for homelessness through bureaucracy
• Use of tiny homes for veterans, emergency housing, and community solutions
• Following your passion, as Todd says, "Fight for something that will change the world."

​
INTRO
Todd McKellips is a social entrepreneur, philanthropist, chaplain and family man. Todd is the state chapter leader for the American Tiny House Association a national effort with affordable housing as at his core mission. He is passionate about bringing home ownership to those who can only dream of it. Todd is the director for Washington Tiny House Association.

WEBSITE
SeattleTinyHomes.com

Join us next Tuesday at 9am PST for SSC LIVE