On October 2, Bay Cities opened the doors of our California headquarters to the public for National Manufacturing Day. Seventy guests—including local students, educators, and potential candidates—spent the morning touring our production floor with staff and getting a firsthand look at how a retail display goes from design to finished product. For many, it was their first time inside a manufacturing plant.

Bay Cities turns 70 this year, and a milestone like that gets you thinking about who will carry this industry forward. For me, Manufacturing Day is a great opportunity to celebrate the people behind manufacturing and also show the next generation what this industry really looks like today. 

We wanted young people in our community to see the work for themselves, because this critical industry will need more people in the years ahead.

Seeing What Manufacturing Really Looks Like

A 2024 study from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute projects that U.S. manufacturers could need as many as 3.8 million new workers between 2024 and 2033, and that roughly 1.9 million of those roles could go unfilled if skills and applicant gaps persist. 

Most students never get a chance to set foot into a working plant, and that is a major part of the talent problem the industry faces. Unfortunately, many picture a dirty, loud factory floor from the past, but that image is so far from what we actually do now.

If you walked our floor today versus 15 years ago, you'd barely recognize it. Every machine was run manually, which took a large staff and constant oversight. Now, facilities run on automation, digital print and data systems that follow a job from the first design file through packout. 

Even so, the work still depends on people who solve problems and bring new ideas to the floor, like the team that reworks a display structure the week before a retail launch because a requirement changed.

Giving the Team Space to Talk

Our team opened the morning with a presentation on how the in-store displays guests already know get made, then led tours of the facility so they could see the process and safety in manufacturing on the floor.

After the tour, guests sat down for lunch with Bay Cities employee-owners and spent the last part of the afternoon asking about specific roles and how people got into them. My favorite part of this event is that students from high school age to graduate students get to spend time with our executive leadership team and department heads. They ask them questions about their careers and how to grow within them. We’ve found and hired 10 paid interns as a result of this annual event. 

We are 100% employee-owned, and that shapes how our people talk about what they do. When you have a stake in something, you talk about it differently. You feel more personally connected, you go deeper into the details, you talk about how invested you are. That's exactly what happened--and that’s exactly what brings enthusiasm to young people to join the space.

Careers People Don't Know Exist

Structural designers, prepress specialists, press operators, quality and testing teams, supply chain managers and packout crews all play a part before a product reaches the shelf. And sometimes a job posting just doesn't do the role justice. You have to see it in action to really get it to click.

I've watched people build careers in this industry and grow into roles they may never have imagined for themselves. For example, Jim Hawton joined our design department in 1991. Today, he is our chief information technology officer and leads our work in automation and AI. Stories like his are common in the industry, and they are the ones young people rarely hear.

Mentorship has always been part of how things actually get done here. Many of the people leading our teams today learned from colleagues who started here decades before them, and Manufacturing Day is a way to open that up to people who haven't joined us yet.

Making an Open House Event Count

For manufacturers planning something similar, here's our advice:

First, and probably most important, get out of the way and let operators and designers run the conversations, as they’re the subject matter experts.

Second, host guests during a normal production day, including safety procedures, so they get a real taste of the day-to-day. A running press and an active packout line give people a much better sense of the work than an empty facility or a presentation alone.

Third, leave time for conversations about specific jobs and career paths. Guests may not know what questions to ask until they have seen the operation, so giving them time afterward to talk with employees can turn general interest into a conversation about a specific opportunity.

Finally, don't just wave goodbye at the door and move on to the next thing. A quick email to a teacher or a follow-up with a student who seemed genuinely curious can take that interest and turn it into a real job opportunity.

We know that shifting how people think about manufacturing isn't something that happens overnight, but you have to start somewhere, and days like this feel like a real step forward.

We have been in business for 70 years, but the people coming into the industry now will shape what the next 70 will look like. Nothing we could put in a brochure or on our website can match that feeling you get when you’re boots on the ground at the plant, having these one-on-one conversations.

That is what we hoped to give our visitors on Manufacturing Day, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s event.