How Newell Brands’ ‘People First’ Approach Spurred Global Growth During a Pandemic

Newell Brands CEO Chris Peterson may have only taken the helm in May, but he has been no stranger to the Atlanta-based consumer products giant.

Mr. Peterson had a key role in a turnaround that has seen Newell return to strength in the aftermath of a pandemic that disrupted global supply chains while dampening in-store shopping. 

He joined the maker of Graco baby products, Coleman camping gear, Sharpie markers, Elmer’s glue and other iconic brands in 2018 as chief financial officer, adding the president role in 2022. 

That tenure roughly coincided with that of the man who handed over the reins, Ravi Saligram, who served as president and CEO from 2019 until his retirement May 16.  

In April, while Mr. Saligram was still CEO, Global Atlanta interviewed him during the International Business Webinar Series of the Georgia State University Center for International Business Education and Research, or CIBER, drawing out lessons on leadership and innovation across borders.

Mr. Saligram, also the former chief executive at OfficeMax and Ritchie Bros. auctioneers, took up the Newell leadership role at a time of low employee engagement, flagging profitability and byzantine complexity, but the idea of ending his career in consumer packaged goods — where he started it— was too good to pass up, despite the obvious challenges. 

“Who hasn’t heard of Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Coleman, Yankee Candle? The thought of working with these iconic brands was very exciting,” he said. 

He also found that a company that had grown through consolidation (including a $15 billion tie-up with Jarden that led to Newell’s three-year hiatus from Atlanta) had faced challenges in integrating its disparate brands and operations. 

The former Newell Rubbermaid, he said, operated as a centralized company, while Jarden was mainly a holding company with most of its brands operating independently, he said. 

“We tried to have two different operating models and the cultures were quite different. Sometimes during acquisition, there’s a lot of focus on financial due diligence … but not enough attention is paid to culture and understanding the human capital aspect, but ultimately that is going to drive things forward.” 

Focusing on culture — particularly showing empathy and re-engaging with employees, from the corporate office to the factory floors — would prove pivotal for Newell, especially when the pandemic introduced a new set of variables just as the company undertook a daunting effort to unify its operational back-end. 

“Complexity is the enemy of driving value,” he said, noting that customers like Walmart complained of challenges in doing business with various Newell brands instead of a unified firm. 

“Complexity is the enemy of driving value.”

ravi saligram

“Their whole thing was, ‘You’re not acting like a $10 billion company — you’re acting like eight $1 billion-plus companies,’” he said. “So scale matters, and if you can’t translate size to scale, you don’t get the benefits of doing these acquisitions.”

Newell cut its SKUs from 102,000 to 28,000, went from 42 enterprise resource planning systems to two, took its websites from 270 to 40 and reduced its real estate footprint by 35 percent. 

One of Mr. Saligram’s signature achievements was Project Ovid, a multi-year initiative to streamline 23 supply chains into one, all while promoting and attracting executives with domain expertise to head the company’s eight business units — which run from outdoor to baby to commercial, food, fragrance and appliances. 

When Mr. Saligram took over in October 2019, he sought to instill his “strongly held personal belief that people are your secret sauce, so we talked about people first, and actions speak louder than words. Every step of the way, when I selected my new team, they had to be team players,” he said. 

Instead of writing on Glass Door, where disgruntled employees were posting negative reviews of company management, Mr. Saligram urged them to write to him directly, and he responded to every email, building trust along the way and engaging with employees through town halls. 

With all this starting to kick into gear, COVID-19 hit. 

Employee Engagement During a Pandemic

Like many companies, Newell Brands had to pivot during an unforeseen and unprecedented moment. Mr. Saligram laid out three priorities: keeping workers safe, keeping factories running and ensuring financial liquidity for the business. 

The people-first sentiment was heightened further. When Newell saw closures coming in China, the company bought millions of masks to keep “frontline champions” safe, and a new rhythm was adopted with professional and headquarters workers who were now working from home, juggling many obligations while trying to stay well. 

“Every manager tried to communicate with their employees and show heart. We also start saying, ‘Hey don’t call people at the lunch hour, because parents are now feeding their kids who are at home. Or don’t call at eight o’clock at night, just because you know they’re at home.’ So we tried to show our humanity, and I think that helped quite a bit.” 

That carried over to international operations, where providing masks and doing periodic check-ins with factories in places like Mumbai made even small subsidiaries of the massive global company feel like they were not alone. 

Very soon, employee engagement scores, which Mr. Saligram had resolved to bring back from the depths, had risen to what he called “world class norms.” In 2022 and 2023, Newell Brands was named one of Fortune’s most admired companies, a milestone it had never before reached. Only Rubbermaid had made the list in 1994, before the integration with Newell. 

Still, about 40 percent of the company’s sales were sourced from third party factories, leaving the company open to risk from a variety of sides. 

“The supply chain issues during the pandemic wreaked havoc on us like everyone else and we were particularly reliant on ocean freight,” Mr. Saligram said. 

[pullquote]”We tried to show our humanity, and that helped quite a bit.” [/pullquote]

Container costs shot up from $3,000 to $16,000, contributing to the “huge headwind” of inflation, and port congestion meant that even when ships arrived, they weren’t necessarily offloading goods.

Inventories finally did shift later in the pandemic, with stores going from scarcity to glut, leaving brands facing immense pricing pressures — yet another speed bump on the road to normality. 

Trends, Innovation and Achieving Global Scale

In the meantime, Newell was able to leverage COVID trends for the benefit of its diverse portfolio, advancing e-commerce in a new way as traditional in-person channels became less reliable with people stuck at home, Mr. Saligram said. 

With millennials and Gen-Zers stuck at home learning to cook, Newell positioned Rubbermaid containers and Ball preserving jars for new uses. With Starbucks and other coffee shops closed, Mr. Coffee introduced a cold-brew system that encouraged consumers to become home baristas. As camping and outdoor activities became more commonplace, Coleman celebrated its 120th anniversary with the “Outside is calling” campaign. 

Along the way, online sales penetration grew from 12 percent to 22 percent, responding to the demands of an omni-channel world. 

“We were very fast on working with customers on a buy-online, pickup at store or curbside and meeting the consumer where they were shopping,” Mr. Saligram said. 

This came as the company continued to juggle the relationship with its main customers — retailers — and the end consumer, the person who buys the product at the store. 

Working across a global system, Newell has started to achieve scale by aligning them under what Mr. Saligram described as “product platforms” — sharing internal knowledge, technology and manufacturing capabilities even when the brands vary. 

“For instance, we don’t do Mr. Coffee in Latin America. We are one brand — Oster — which is a very strong brand in Latin America, so the coffee business is under the Oster name. In the U.K. it’s the Breville name — and these are for historical reasons — in Australia it’s under Sunbeam.” 

The company is also taking knowhow from one business arena to another, seeing if its expertise from fragrance, for instance, can translate into new product innovations in its cleaning business. 

“Structurally though, we are saying innovation is with the brands on a global basis, but we’re making sure that these are true global brand managers, that they are understanding consumer insights across the globe and getting that feedback so that it’s not just trying to take something which. Is very American and pushing it.” 

The company is also fighting brand dilution and fragmentation across many markets. As a truly global brand, the company is careful not to mess with Sharpie, but something like Oster  — premium in Latin America, entry-level in the U.S. — is a different story. Coleman may be top of the line in Japan, but in the U.S. its star had faded. Growing synergy with the more premium 

All this becomes even more important as the company looks abroad for sales — about 35 percent of Newell Brands’ $10 billion comes from markets outside the U.S.

“A stated strategy for us is to turbocharge international. We think there is a lot of potential there,” Mr. Saligram said, noting that the company is becoming more disciplined about entering markets with higher levels of discretionary income with a direct sales approach that brings larger amounts of its product portfolio to bear. 

“We’re in 60 countries, but we’re trying to narrow down the focus — 10 countries internationally account for about 85-90 percent of our sales, so we’re trying to get very focused on the countries that matter.”

Diversity Key to Engaging Consumers, Workers

Having lived in six countries and worked for companies like Aramark and SCJohnson during a 40-year business career, Mr. Saligram has concluded that diversity is key to engaging stakeholders meaningfully. 

“Ultimately, you want diverse thinking. You don’t want to surround yourself with people who just think like you,” he said. 

That ends up coming across in a company’s advertising, which Newell has reformed, but also in its approach to employees. 

“When we did our engagement surveys, the No. 1 thing that people said about Newell employees is that they could be themselves, that they didn’t have to pretend to be someone else, and that’s what we’ve striven for.” 

While a focus on purpose and values hasn’t erased differences, it has helped companies create a sense of togetherness at a fraught time in American culture across a vast global enterprise, Mr. Saligram said. 

“It sounds like an iconic phrase, but amidst diversity we have created unity,” he said. 

Atlanta itself, with its strong civil rights history and growing diversity, has played a role in that process, he added. 

“If you can’t create a great, diverse, inclusive company in Atlanta I don’t know where else you will,” he said. “This is my second tour of duty in Atlanta, and I remember coming from London over to Atlanta in 2000. This is a place where everyone embraces you, so this is a model place to create sort of that utopian dream of bringing in the best harmony. It should be a model city.” 

In retirement, Mr. Saligram hopes to stay active on company boards and in private equity, and he’s also open to speaking to business schools like Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business, where the GSU-CIBER is housed. 

One thing is clear for the longtime executive: No more CEO roles.