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and a site visit, which is used to validate and refine services requested by grantees. TBAP provided four categories of assistance – general business, marketing, product testing and technical assistance. Feedstock conversion grantees received a wide variety of services generally aimed at establishing production capacity using crumb rubber, facilitating raw material sourcing from crumb rubber producers and compounders, and developing marketing strategies, collateral and other resources needed to expand sales of these products. Examples of the assistance provided are provided in Table 1. Grantees were often less interested in general assistance as they felt they could address general business operational needs in-house, despite TBAP assessments in some cases that indicated fundamental issues with the basic business information and management systems. Table 1 Examples of TBAP Assistance by Category General Marketing

Product Testing and Certification

Technical Assistance

 Business Planning and Strategy Development  Pricing Strategies  Financial/Operational Performance Benchmarking  Inventory Mgmt. Control Systems  Accounting System and Controls  Strategic Partnership Development  Financing Strategies and Assistance  Customized Training

 TDP Market Research  Branding,

 Product

 Developing and Sourcing Crumb Rubber Feedstocks  Manufacturing Systems Review  Process Evaluation/ Optimization  Energy Audits  Product Quality Evaluation and Systems  Trouble-Shooting Product Performance Issues  Evaluating/ Implementing New Technologies

Testing for Safety, Fire Resistance, Performance, etc.

Marketing and Sales Strategy and Planning  Customer Satisfaction and Retention Strategies  Product Pricing  Customer Relations Management and Sales Systems  Website and collateral design, programming and printing  E-commerce Solutions

 Product

Prototype Analysis  Documentation

of Recycled Content Use and Other Product Attributes

TBAP Feedstock Conversion Participants This report focuses on ten firms that each received one or more TBAP grants to pursue feedstock conversion, as listed in Table 2 below. Overall, these ten firms received a total of 16 TBAP service grants with a combined total of $1,729,365. Across all feedstock conversion grantees, approximately 60 percent of services by dollar value involved marketing, with the remainder mostly split between technical assistance and product testing. While some companies other than TBAP grantees have undertaken product development or other activities related to feedstock conversion, SAIC feels the firms listed in Table 2 comprise the vast majority of TBAP feedstock conversion assistance efforts and embody the key lessons learned to date.

Contractor’s Report

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