Julien Mininberg, President and CEO, Kaz Inc., Southborough
Photo/Matt pilon
Julien Mininberg, formerly of Proctor & Gamble, was hired in 2006 by Kaz Inc., which develops thermometers, air purifiers and other products under major brand names like Vicks, Braun, Honeywell and recently, Pur. Mininberg, who was later promoted to CEO, was tasked with restructuring and revitalizing the company, which was going through growing pains following its 2002 acquisition of a division of Honeywell. The changes he put in place helped pave the way for the sale of the company to Texas-based Helen of Troy in 2010 for $260 million. Mininberg sat down with MetroWest495 Biz to discuss how it all happened.
What does Kaz do here at its headquarters in Southborough?
I'm here. Most of my leadership team is here. Our entire U.S. business is based out of this location. And there's a lot of global capability in this building, like R&D, engineering, artwork and design, regulatory and all kinds of global support functions. This building has about 140 employees. During calendar year 2012, we've hired about 40 people, mostly from here in Massachusetts.
What's driving that hiring?
One is we're growing and the other is we made an acquisition, which is the bigger driver. In 2011, a year after Kaz came on board, Helen of Troy accepted Kaz's recommendation to buy the Pur water business from Procter & Gamble. I took that as a nice sign of confidence that they felt good about the business they had bought with Kaz, and further, that they were entrusting and empowering the management team here that had recently joined the company.
Kaz develops and sells products under various brand names. What's it like taking on a new product, like Pur, and are there similarities?
The only real reason to buy a business is if you think you can add value to it. In Kaz's case with Pur, we were already in a number of mass-market retail household-type devices. The target audience is people who have a strong interest in making sure there are clean sources of things as basic as air and water in their home. Similarly, the top 10 customers of Pur and the top 10 of Kaz line up almost 100 percent. Customers like Walmart, Target, Sam's Club, Costo, Home Depot – these are our bread-and-butter, core clients. And the buyers in some cases are literally the same person.
How did Kaz become a subsidiary of a publicly owned company?
In 1995 when our license with Vicks was done, Kaz was probably just under $40 million in sales. By 2010 we were north of $400 million in sales. Kaz got itself pretty big, pretty fast, especially with the Honeywell acquisition. Honeywell made Kaz global. It was one of these "minnow swallowing the whale" situations where you get bigger but it's tough for the minnow. So Kaz came to the decision that it would hire outside professional management, and I came in as one example of that. We redid our [C-level executives] and put in major changes — a new strategic plan, a new general management structure, radical changes in our sourcing and new product development capability. We had over 4,000 employees. We closed (all) four factories and we went to an outsourcing model. That model made Kaz a lot leaner, a bit more capable. And ultimately, we produced multiple back-to-back record profit years, even through the financial crisis.
Kaz licenses some brand names, such as Vicks or Braun, but owns others outright?
The businesses are ours, but in some cases, not the brands. We own Pur soup-to-nuts, unlike Vicks or Braun, where the businesses are ours, but none of those brands belong to our company. The licensors have a right to choose whether or not they accept their name on a product. So we're especially careful on things like quality, manufacturing excellence and treating our consumers the way they expect to be, because we're stewards for the brands. We treat them very much like they're our own.
Is there a particular lesson you've learned about managing or leadership?
One has to do with the power of having a sound strategic plan and the other is a strong culture. Kaz needed a new strategic plan when I came almost seven years ago because the business was growing but suffering terribly on the bottom line and had a very weak balance sheet. The implementation of a powerful strategic plan made it possible to get all those changes. The second thing is that the strategic choices that are made are powerful. For example, eliminating manufacturing as an in-house capability and going to a regional go-to-market structure in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Canada.Those choices are powerful, especially when it turns out more of them are right than wrong. It's possible with a strong implementation and a good leadership team to make a very meaningful turnaround. n
This article was edited for length and content by Matt Pilon.
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