News

CEO 2024 Year-End Summary As 2024 comes to a close, we at ARMA would like to wish you Happy Holidays! I wanted to take a moment to provide an update on the accomplishments of 2024 and provide a preview of what’s to come in 2025.

Recap of 2024 First, I wish to express my gratitude to those who welcomed me into this role and opened up your facilities and offered up your time to allow me to come out and learn more about your businesses. Your input into YOUR trade association is invaluable as we work to bring programming that provides you relevant knowledge, as we advocate for pro-manufacturing policies, and as we work to address workforce needs across all manufacturing industry segments.

We recognized all the efforts that Liz Gori has poured into ARMA over the years with a promotion to Vice President, Membership and Events. She has kept ARMA moving, especially during the CEO transition period. Please take a moment to say thanks and extended congratulations to Liz next time you see her!

I was able to visit with 60 members/affiliates this past year and will continue my “road tour” in 2025. If you would be willing to have me out for a visit and discussion, please reach out and let me know, I’m always happy to come by for a tour. We have incredible diversity among industry segments, and we want to make sure everyone is aware of the great things happening in the Central Texas manufacturing community.

ARMA expanded our Board of Directors this year to 19 members, with a focus on adding more representation from our smaller manufacturers. Manufacturers with 150 or fewer employees represent 76% of our membership. It is important that the voice of these members is represented on the board, as well as providing diversity among the board.

We launched our Women in Manufacturing initiative this year and will expand on this program in 2025. I believe it is important to bring more women into manufacturing as well as highlight their leadership. It is an important voice to be heard. Special shout out to Liz for leading on this initiative.

We placed an emphasis on Veteran hiring initiatives and support systems. The desire to hire veterans is overwhelming, and we will continue to focus on creating programs to train and support veterans and their spouses as they transition out of the military.

Alexis Flores, after a maternity break to start the year, hit the ground running on her return and has been working diligently with all our partners in K-12 education and post high school training partners. We are turning the ship on this and starting to see some progress, but much work still lies ahead of us this coming year. We must change the perception of manufacturing. We all know the value of having a manufacturing career: it provides financial freedom with a low-cost entry point; it provides purpose, which is important for Gen Z; it creates opportunity to become an entrepreneur and business owner.

Looking Ahead to 2025 – The Year of Engagement ARMA’s theme for 2025 with be “Engagement.” I like to say you get out of a trade association what you put into it. Are you utilizing all the resources that are provided? Are there resources that we need to provide that we are not currently offering? ARMA’s mission is to strengthen manufacturing through advocacy, workforce development, and networking. We can only do that when our members are engaged with us, and vice versa. How can we better engage with you in 2025?

If you are interested in getting more involved this year please let us know! We have many opportunities to engage with membership, program and event planning, and volunteer efforts. We are always looking for more participation! Please Liz Gori at liz@arma-tx.org for information on how to for support our membership committee, programs, or events.

ARMA is moving! We are headed to a new office space that provides us flexibility in hosting meetings and events that we have not had previously. We are excited for the possibilities with the new space, and the official announcement will be coming in early January.

We are also looking to add a new employee in 2025. We are limited currently on how much we can continue to serve the manufacturing community and therefore the time has come to grow. We hope to add a new team member by the beginning of summer.

As we look forward to 2025, you can expect many of the programs you have come to know and love to return: we will once again recognize the contributions of our members with our 3rd Annual ARMIEs in February; the spring and fall golf tournaments will be back; we will be back at ARMA member Staccato for the Clay Shoot. In addition, we will be bringing a new and improved Manufacturing Expo & Conference (see below for more detail).

We are also excited to bring new programs in 2025. We recently announced a free business training session in conjunction with Texas State University Small Business Development Center (SBDC). This program is geared towards manufacturers in the 33XXXX NAICS code with a goal to help small manufacturers grow and scale. This program is being offered for FREE to qualifying manufacturers. You can find more information here https://sbdc.mccoy.txst.edu/training/prism.html .

In May, we will be taking a small group of manufacturers on a curated Kaizen lean immersion trip to Japan. Prior to leaving attendees will meet one-on-one with our consultant to better understand your business and highlight an issue to resolve. During our trip, we will incorporate that issue and work to provide solutions. Post trip, there will be a follow p with the consultant to review the progress in implementing the solution. If you would like to learn more about the trip, please mark your calendars for January 16 (4 – 5pm) as we will be hosting an informational session and happy hour.


Our Operation Summits were well received last year, and we will continue with more in 2025. Our first Ops Summit, Supply Chain, will be in March with a focus on localizing supply chain, impacts of foreign policy that will accelerate reshoring, how to become a preferred vendor, and the introduction of tools to help you whether you need locally sourced resources, or wish to be the local resource. The best part of this program is the cost: it will be FREE to ARMA manufacturing members!

We are bringing back the CEO roundtable. These dinners are meant to bring together small peer groups of owners/executives/leaders to discuss … well … anything you want. The groups will be limited to no more than nine manufacturers and the topic is whatever is on your mind. Consider them therapy sessions if you want, a time to discuss what is going on in the industry, your business, who is going to win the Super Bowl. If you are interested in attending, please reach out to me or Liz so we can get you added. First therapy session will be in late January/early February.

Regarding our annual conference and expo, we have heard loud and clear that members wish to have more exhibitors and time to network. We made the decision to move the conference to a Kalahari Resorts and Conventions in Round Rock as it will allow us to more than triple the size of the expo. And we will be going to a multi-day format to allow even more networking the evening of the first night. We are working with many of your vendors to curate our best expo and conference to date! If you would like to be an exhibitor, please do not hesitate to reach out now to find out more about the new exhibitor packages we have. Mark your calendars for October 1 & 2 and make plans to spend the night (discounted room rates will be available for attendees.) Stay tuned for more info coming in early 2025.

Message to our Affiliate Members/Sponsors As we look to provide more relevant programming to our manufacturing members, we also want to find opportunities for our affiliates and sponsors to justify the investment in our organization. Our goal is to host a non-manufacturers happy hour to discuss more targeted sponsorship programs for the coming year and solicit your feedback. More to come on this.

Membership Dues As you know, costs have risen significantly since COVID. ARMA has worked to control our costs but nonetheless, there are certain expenses that have been passed along to ARMA which have required us to review our current membership dues. ARMA’s dues have been below those of our peer regional trade associations. As we are still a relatively young trade association, we kept dues low to encourage membership growth. We are now focusing on the development of programming that provides more value to members (e.g., aforementioned business training and operations summit being offered for no charge to manufacturing members.)

We have not had a material adjustment to our dues since our founding in 2013. We now need to reflect our costs and service offerings through membership dues increase to allow us to continue to expand our programs going forward. The new dues schedule that will go into effect January 1 is as follows:

Manufacturer Membership Dues
(based on local headcount)
1-10 $ 500
11-50 $ 650
51-150 $ 900
151-300 $ 1,200
301-400 $ 1,500
401+ $ 2,000
Affiliate Membership
Annual Dues $ 3,000
Banking Affiliate
Annual Dues $ 4,000
Distributor/Logistics Membership

Annual Dues $ 1,500
Stakeholder/Education Partner
Annual Dues $ 600
Sponsorship Levels
Platinum $ 10,000
Cornerstone (Manufacturer) $ 7,000
Cornerstone (Non-Manufacturer) $ 7,500
Gold (Manufacturer) $ 3,300
Gold (Non-Manufacturer) $ 4,000

If you have any questions regarding this, please reach out as we would like to hear from you. We appreciate our members and supporters of manufacturing, and we are excited for the year ahead!


Happy Holidays,

Kevin Fincher, President & CEO Austin Regional Manufacturers Association