Just hours before John Lampe formally announced his impending retirement as chairman, president and CEO of Bridgestone Americas Holding, Tire Review was granted an industry-exclusive interview with Lampe and Mark Emkes, the incoming head of both BAH and Bridgestone/Firestone North American Tire (BFNAT). This interview, in its original form, was posted seconds after Lampe’s announcement on both Tire Review’s Web site and our sister aftermarketNews.com site. Here is a condensed version of the interview.
John, why are you retiring at this time, and was your retirement something that was planned?
John Lampe: I think it’s the right time both for myself personally and for my family, and it’s the right time for the company. When I took the job I talked with my family about how long I would be able to do it and how long they would be able to put up with me doing it. This was not a quick decision. It was made well in advance. We’ve had long conversations on how best to do the transition, and what the timing would be. So we’ve had a lot of time to put everything in place that we needed to for this thing work really smooth.
Mark Emkes: And the other good thing, with John’s management style, I had a chance to run a lot of the Americas operations. For the past year and couple of months, I’ve been running BFNAT so John has given me a chance to be exposed to pretty much the entire business.
In terms of management style, what can we expect to see from Mark Emkes?
Emkes: My goal is to build on the foundation that John built and allow the company to evolve and become a premier business enterprise. I think a lot of people see us as a tire company. And we are ®€“ that is our major focus. But we have 2,200 retail stores, a great asset here in the U.S., and we have a diversified products company, both of which are profitable, good businesses, and, I think, positioned for additional excellent growth. Our North American tire business is still not profitable, and while we’re making great progress, we still need to put a big focus on that piece of the business.
Looking back on the tire recall and all of the subsequent issues, did you truly believe the company pull through?
Lampe: We just never lost our hope. It was difficult. We all ®€“ including our dealers and our parent company ®€“ went through a really difficult time. We refer to it as our darkest days. But we never lost hope. And everyday, we came to work and saw the loyalty of our associates. They never gave up. You’d get calls and e-mails from dealers that said they weren’t going to leave us. We had our parent company sending their best people over, and giving us assistance. We just never lost hope because we had all this support around us. I will never forget the contribution that our employees, our customers and our parent corporation made. Without them being fully committed, we would have had a much more difficult time. But now we’ve made a significant turnaround. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re a hell of a lot better than where we were. We’re focused on the future, and I think this company has a tremendous future.
We’ve talked about how hard things have been over the last three years. But, share with us what some of the best parts of the last three-plus years have been.
Lampe: I think going to meetings where we had our independent dealers there. Just the amount of support and encouragement that they would give us. Statements like, ‘We’re going to sell your product even more than we did before. We’re not going to let people leave our store without buying one of your products.’ Those are the kind of things that just made you want to come to work and fight your way through this thing. And I think the honor that the parent company bestowed on me in making me the first non-Japanese and first American to be elected to the Bridgestone board of directors was a huge honor, and one that I’ll never forget.
Are you satisfied with the position BAH and BFNAT are in right now and do you feel that all of the safeguards are in place to prevent another devastating problem?
Lampe: Let’s divide that into two parts: the state of the company and then we’ll talk about the safeguards. Am I satisfied? No. The fact that we made $80-plus million in 2002 is gratifying. It’s obviously a huge turnaround, but it’s nowhere near where an $8 billion company should be, so we’ve got some work to do. Mark mentioned North American Tire, and we’re still struggling there. We’ve made tremendous progress under Mark’s leadership. We are so much better positioned today than we were two years ago, and I have no doubt that we’ll get back to where we want to be. But we’ve got a lot of room to grow and a lot of things to do.
From a safeguards standpoint, I am very comfortable with what we’ve done. We’ve worked extremely hard with our early warning system. We’re now able to detect issues and get them resolved before they become problems. We have no issues at all complying with TREAD Act reporting requirements. And we continue with kaizan activities in our plants, improving our processes, quality and performance. So I’m extremely confident that this is well positioned to go forward successfully. Mark has made substantial re-organizational changes in North American Tire that give our people more responsibility and more accountability, and we’re already seeing the dividends of that. As Mark mentioned, our Latin American operations, our diversified products operations, and our retail operations have had a spectacular 2003 and will continue to dominate their individual markets in 2004.
What things do you feel you’ve left unfinished?
Lampe: Well, I would’ve liked to have been more successful in the North American Tire part of our business. Before I brought Mark in, I tried to run that and struggled somewhat with everything else that was going on. Mark certainly picked up the reigns and has made tremendous progress. I would’ve liked to have left at a time when we were making money in our tire business. We are in the middle of our union negotiations, and I am very disappointed that we weren’t able to get those concluded during my tenure here and during 2003, and I hope that Mark will be successful in bringing those to a good conclusion for both our teammates and ourselves.
Mark, what issues do you see near term, or even long term, that BAH and specifically BFNAT face, and how do you intend to pursue those?
Emkes: I think one of the major issues are the union negotiations that are still in front of us. I think we need to understand that we are all in the same family; we are all in the same boat. And we need to find a way to make sure that we can competitively produce tires in North America, which will be to the benefit of all of our team members. We’re ready to get back to the table and find a way to work together and guarantee the future of the company. It needs to be through negotiations, through serious discussions about being competitive here in North America.
What can we expect to see from Mark Emkes as the head of arguably the largest tire company in North America?
Emkes: Well, I have very simple working concepts. In the sports world, the coaches who teach the basics usually are the ones that are successful. What we will be doing here, going forward, is continue to build on the foundation that John built. We have distractions during the course of the day, but we need to make sure we focus on improving the customer, teammate, government and community relations while at the same time improving our processes, systems and quality. Those really are the things that we have out in front of us on a daily basis. And we’ll accomplish those things by respecting people, treating customers as partners, constantly visualizing success, planning well and then implementing. I think where some companies get distracted is when everyone has a plan, but oftentimes those plans are too complex. The board of directors walks out, giving themselves high fives for a great plan, but when it comes to execution, the plans are so complicated that they can’t be implemented. Planning well means making a plan that is clear, that everyone understands, so that it will be easily implemented. That’s pretty simple, and that has worked so far everywhere I have been.
Mark, where do you see business and growth opportunities for BAH?
Emkes: We have great momentum going, I would say, on all sides of our business ®€“ consumer replacement side, the truck-bus radial side, OTR, ag. We have very strong marketshares in those areas. We have new products coming out in those segments. And, in our consumer replacement business, we’re now addressing the tuner market with our new Fuzion brand. We’re excited about the opportunities that are out there, and we’re addressing them, to a large extent, with new products. And we’re going to continue to build on the relationships that people like John and John Gamauf have established over the years.
