How many different wheel and handle systems does Samsonite have?
Pre-Nicolosi, Samsonite had 37 different wheel and handle systems on its luggage and 100 different zipper systems. Now there are fewer than 10 variations. To save money he even dropped out of the industry's annual trade show. This cost-cutting should save Samsonite more than $30 million annually, according to Nicolosi.
How many employees did Nicolosi fire?
The headhunter suggested Nicolosi. Nicolosi did what was expected of him. He fired 475 of the company's 8,000 employees, shut down factories in Mexico and Canada, and centralized purchasing, sourcing and freight costs for all three luggage lines Samsonite, American Tourister and Lark.
How much did Scott Dunlap's stock increase?
Scott's stock increased $6.5 billion in value in just 20 months. Dunlap, though a villain to some people, became a hero to many investors. Last year the mere news of Dunlap's arrival to run sagging Sunbeam Corp. increased the company's market value by $1 billion. Call it the Dunlap Effect.
When did Samsonite go bankrupt?
In 1992 it filed for bankruptcy, and emerged with dealsters Leon Black and Carl Icahn as leading shareholders. In early 1996 one of Leon Black's partners asked executive search firm Spencer Stuart to find a chief executive like Al Dunlap to work his magic on Samsonite.
Where did Al Dunlap meet Nicolosi?
Al Dunlap met Nicolosi on a tennis court in Boca Raton, Fla. and recruited him to help at Scott. Nicolosi left Scott with $20 million in stock gains. The scene shifts. Denver-based Samsonite, the $740 million maker of luggage, including such brands as American Tourister and Lark, is a troubled company.
Is high end luggage hard sided?
Much high-end luggage is the hard-sided stuff popular in the days of travel by train and ocean liner. But, according to retailers interviewed by FORBES, most Americans have long since gone over to lighter-weight, soft-sided luggage. And resin prices, a key raw material for suitcases, have been rising.
Who was the manager of Procter and Gamble in the 1970s?
A good deal of it seems to have rubbed off on Richard Nicolosi, 49. Nicolosi cut his teeth as a paper products brand manager at Procter & Gamble during the 1970s and 1980s and then left, after 23 years, to become a consultant.
How many plants does Dunlap have?
Indeed, in his first week Dunlap, with no real information to base his decision on, told his senior executive team that the company would eventually have just 4 or 5 plants operating, down from the current 26. As the company’s stock price went up, Dunlap realized that the “Dunlap premium” was working against him.
What is the story of Byrne's book?
Byrne’s book tells an all-too-familiar story: a person with an enormous ego begins to believe his own press clippings. Investors flock to him, showering him with power and wealth, but failing to create any system of accountability.
Who was the chairman of Scott Paper?
In 1994 Al Dunlap took over as chairman and chief executive officer of Scott Paper to the acclaim of all those who believed that what mattered most in company management was enhancing shareholder value. Scott Paper had become, like so many other sclerotic companies, slow to move, bloated, and bleeding money. Dunlap, a man who enters a room as though he has just rappelled down the side of the building, immediately took a chainsaw to the business, cutting employees by the thousands, closing plants, and even reneging on commitments made to charities by his predecessor. He reportedly looked at a shelf of binders containing the company’s strategic plans from previous years and ordered that they all be eliminated, sniffing, “I don’t read fiction.”
Did Dunlap buy a bulletproof vest?
Eventually, the book reports, Dunlap bought a bullet-proof vest and a gun – and charged them both to the company. As Chainsaw tells it, Donald Uzzi, a manufacturing executive in the firm, questioned the wisdom of closing a particular plant.
Did Dunlap eliminate major plant and equipment maintenance?
Wall Street was ecstatic, but others weren’t quite so sure. Kimberly-Clark executives learned after the fact that Dunlap all but eliminated major plant and equipment maintenance, slashed R&D expenses, and found other ways to borrow from the future in order to inflate the present bottom line.
Who ran Scott's factories?
As Byrne puts it, “Dunlap ran Scott’s factories and drove people as if the company were going out of business.”. Even as Kimberly-Clark executives spent hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up the mess Dunlap had created, Scott investors were singing his praises for enriching them.
Who was Dunlap's right hand man?
He implemented cuts arbitrarily, based on his own whims and recommendations from his right hand man, Donald Burnham, a senior partner at Coopers & Lybrand.
When did Sunbeam go bankrupt?
Dunlap's shenanigans, combined with the group's debt load, forced Sunbeam to file for bankruptcy in 2002. Although shareholders eventually received $125m from lawsuits against auditors Arthur Andersen and Dunlap, this was a fraction of Sunbeam's peak market value of $4bn.
Who is Albert Dunlap?
Albert Dunlap was born in New Jersey in 1937 and studied at West Point Military Academy, briefly serving in the army before moving into the paper industry. Despite being dismissed as president of paper-mill Nitec in 1976 for manipulating earnings, he ran several companies in the 1980s and 1990s, gaining a reputation for saving troubled firms with mass redundancies (hence his nickname, "Chainsaw Al").
