Jack Thompson

Jack Thompson
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Rather than retiring early, Jack Thompson decided he preferred the challenge of running Penda Corp.The manufacturer of molded plastic bedliners for pickup trucks has cut costs and boosted sales under his leadership.

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- Jack Thompson

But a masterfully engineered turnaround has given the Portage-based company the dominant share in its main business, the manufacturing of molded plastic bedliners for pickup trucks.Its main competitor, Durakon Industries announced last month that it would close a Michigan plant as part of a restructuring move.
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Much of the credit goes to Jack Thompson, former CEO of shock absorber company Monroe Auto Parts.Thompson was just starting to realize that at 58, retirement didn't suit him, but he didn't want to return to a corporate world he felt was too obsessed with a me-first attitude.

For Thompson, doing well in business comes down to two principal tenets - boosting employees and cutting costs.

Thompson slashed costs through weekly manufacturing improvement workshops and poured the savings into sales, marketing, research and development.The result: 65% growth in unit sales and market share in the last five years.
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Penda was far from efficient when Thompson took over in 1997 and the company was still reeling from the loss of its biggest customer, Ford Motor Co."We were either going to change the way we did business or shut down," he said.

The company was interviewing for a new chief financial officer when its chief executive officer resigned and the company and the ex-CEO became embroiled in a court dispute over his severance pay.

Thompson heard about the job from a former colleague at Tenneco.Today Thompson and other former colleagues are in key positions at Penda.

Through experience he gained in Europe, Australia and Michigan, Thompson was familiar with how to execute a turnaround.The centerpiece of his strategy: cutting waste and cutting costs.

Thompson said coming to Penda was a chance to move away from the "me-first" attitude that permeates too many corporate cultures.

The son of a factory worker who started out working in automotive factories himself, Thompson said it's important for chief executives to remember the impact they have on the people who work at their company.

At Penda, whether the factory workers would still have jobs was in doubt, given the financial straits the company found itself in five years ago, he said.Penda employs more than 750.

"We've protected these people's employment, which is a big deal," he said.

"At our staff meetings, we talk about the fact that we have an obligation to protect those people, and it's not just them.It's their families, it's their kids.They can't do anything about it.They're showing up every day and they're doing their thing.It's about a lot more than money."

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"We have more salesmen than all of our competitors do together, multiplied by a large number," Thompson said.

With the turnaround complete, Penda is aiming for more growth, through possible acquisitions and marketing of its newest product, a premium bedliner that the company claims has twice the durability and skid resistance of other bedliners.

A national television advertising campaign during the college football season will introduce consumers to the new product, which Penda calls the Skid Resistor.

For Penda, the ad blitz will try to reach out to an untapped market - the 23% of pickup truck owners who don't have any kind of liner on their pickup trucks.

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"There are a lot of people who don't buy any protection for their trucks," Thompson said."To me, if you pay $30,000 or $35,000 for a truck and then go out there and throw a shovel in the back . . . I wouldn't throw a shovel on my hood, and that's the same effect."

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sept. 2, 2002.BACK TO TOPFEATURED ADVERTISERS>