How Does Gillette Success In The Overseas Markets

By Author: kinhomchan
Total Articles: 66
Comment this article

Michael C. Hawley became the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gil-letter Co2, following Mr. Zeien's3 retirement in 1999. As a 36-year veteran of the Company, Mr. Hawley had served in a variety of4 finance, marketing, technical operations and general management positions in most of the Company's core product categories. He was one of Gillette's most experienced global managers, having lived and worked in six different countries spanning five continents.

In 1979, long before China was chic5, Michael C. Hawley flew into Shanghai. Hawley, then the Sydney-based head of Asia-Pacific operations, was on a mission to make Gillette one of the first Western companies to crack6 the Chinese market.But his search for a joint venture to make razor blades was increasingly look-king like Mission; Impossible. "We were flying blind," recalls Hawley. China didn't even have a law for joint ventures as yet. Worse, while Shanghai, home to China's largest razor-blade manufacturer was the natural site, the city was still under the sway of the Gang of Four. 7Many American executives would have given up. But Hawley, an international veteran ...
... who had already broken ground in ough terrain from Teheran to Bogota, persevered. Eventually, he struck a deal in the northern city of Sheen-yang. It took over two dozen trips and nearly four years before the Shenyang Daily Use Metals Products Co. , as Gillette's joint venture was called, began production.

It was just a sliver of the market8. But the payoff came in 1992 when Gillette beat the competition to buy 70% of the Shanghai operation, the largest blade plant in Asia at that time. As a result, Gillette controlled over 80% of China's $51 million razor-blade market.That achievement spoke volumes about why Hawley was being groomed as Gillette's next CEO while Al Seine was still at the helm. 'Foreign markets offered far more growth than the mature U. S., and Gillette built an internationally seasoned management team to seize the opportunities.

While many American CEOs only did a brief stint abroad, 59-year old Hawley built his career overseas. Although he joined Gillette in 1961 as an assistant to the controller in the Boston headquarters, by 1966 he was running Gillette's small import-export operation in Hong Kong. Promotions followed over the next two decades, taking him to five continents with a wife and three children in tow.

Hawley kept spending much of his time traveling and garnering10 information — for example, on how Duracell batteries were moving in the open-air markets that rang Russian cities. Hawley wasn't shy about shouting out over-seas managers' errors; your name is right there, right across that really crappy display. "His years abroad made Hawley opposed to any hint of a nationalistic approach to management. I don't think you can be a global company and say you have to have Americans running it,"11 he said. Two of Gillette's four executive vice-presidents, the traditional stepping-stone to the top, were Europeans.

The burly Hawley was comfortable tackling nuts-and-bolts challenges. 12"He's a man who knows how to get things done," said Seine. Gillette's board was betting that he was just the choice to see that the blueprint developed by Seine was executed.