5 memorable business trips (1)

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve had jobs that have allowed me to travel and taken me to places I’d normally not visit. I’ve always enjoyed the travel part of my job, if you don’t you really should find another job, and every trip gave me positive memories but just a handful were maybe longer and more eventful then the others. This is the first post of a series of five describing some of these. They go back some forty years, the first preceded email and even the last preceded the explosion of social media.

1 the gurus trip round Germany

It was in the mid 80s when I was working for Dow Chemical Europe based in Horgen, near Zurich in Switzerland. I’d taken on the role of Product Marketing Manager for Methocel cellulose ethers, a $50 million business with a manufacturing plant in Stade near Hamburg in Germany. It was a good job, I’d been promoted into the position, but business was poor and it seemed that I’d inherited a bit of a poisoned chalice.

The cellulose ether market was dominated by three German chemical companies and Dow with a handful of minor suppliers. There was some over capacity and much talk about investing in more capacity. That of course would just make it more difficult to operate profitably with too much capacity chasing a market which wasn’t growing.

It was therefore deemed to be a good idea for there to be meetings between the various companies, not between me and my counterparts but between our bosses, the ‘gurus’, to agree that adding capacity would be a folly. This was realised in a trip round Germany to meet the other big players and I was to drive my boss’s boss (Duco) along with two senior US managers (Denis and John)

Our trip began on a Sunday evening in Frankfurt and knowing that there was some driving to be done I booked a Mercedes from the car rental company. Duco took one look at it and pronounced it too small which meant I had to go back and get the keys for a much more expensive Mercedes. It was probably a 700 series or similar.

Our first meeting was close to Frankfurt after which we drove to Dusseldorf. That was when I appreciated the comfort of a top of the range Mercedes which was quiet and comfortable even at the speeds which were possible on German Autobahns. These were tested on one particular straight stetch when I was encouraged by the assembled Dow senior managers to hit a speed of 200 km/hr!

After Dusseldorf we flew to Hamburg for our third meeting which took place discretely in a restaurant over lunch in a private room. I remember sitting opposite my counterpart and reading, albeit upside down, the confidential rational behind his company’s expansion plans which he had open on the table before him.

We had a second meeting in Hamburg with a smaller Swedish supplier, we then visited the manufacturing team at Stade before a smaller group, just me and the US guys, flew over to the UK to meet another smaller supplier.

We stayed overnight in London and then took the train north where we arrived too early for our meeting so we stopped in a cafe, no coffee shops in those days, for bacon sandwiches. Denis asked for mustard and I didn’t think to warn him that English mustard is hot. He found out!

We flew back to Switzerland on Friday evening having done what we wanted but would it make a difference? Actually it didn’t matter because I’d initiated a major marketing led push to improve Dow’s market position. It redefined our approach to the market and resulted in a significant improvement in our market share with consequent profitability.