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New Haven's Quietest Giant
Assa Abloy North American head Thelin burnishes the Sargent legacy
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Business New Haven
6/18/2001
By: BNH
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Clas Thelin of Madison has been with the Assa Abloy Group since it was established in 1994 and has headed its North American operations since then. During that period Assa Abloy's North American companies, which today number 25, have grown in the aggregate from 300 employees and $30 million in annual sales to more than 6,500 employees and sales in excess of $1 billion. Having acquired New Haven's Sargent Manufacturing Co. in 1996, Assa Abloy today is the world's leading manufacturer and supplier of locks and associated products. BNH spoke with Thelin earlier this month.
Tell us how the Assa Abloy acquisition of Sargent came about.
The whole Assa Abloy group was formed in 1994, resulting from the merger of two main competitors in northern Europe. At the time I was in the U.S., running Arrow Lock in Brooklyn, N.Y., which one of the merger partners owned. As a result of the formation of the Assa Abloy group we had some stuff to clean up in 1995, but late in that year we started to negotiate about the acquisition of Sargent. That was completed in December of 1995, and I think we closed that deal on January 13, 1996.
What made Sargent so attractive an acquisition for your company?
As one of the main players in the North American market, for us it was an important first, more serious step into the market. It had long traditions - the company was formed in 1864. There was a group of companies that we acquired at that time, and for us [Sargent] was a very interesting first step into the North American market.
How did Sargent need to change, from your company's perspective?
I think it comes back to pretty basic things. We can there as a long-term owner to develop the company to build a stronger organization long-term. Any kind of financial [institutional] owner would want to harvest as much as they can over two or three of four years. That's a different perspective [from ours]. We are in it for the long term and we are prepared to invest in the people and in the factory. Probably the biggest difference if you look at the company now compared with five years ago is what we have invested in equipment and what we have invested in [its] operations overall - they way we work with people, make them more involved and take more responsibility. We have worked with number of [examples of] new thinking about manufacturing such as the continuous-improvement process. We broke the company down into smaller units so people could take more ownership of the everyday operations and understand the situation better so that they could influence that in a positive way.
Has Sargent's actually product mix changed over the five years?
I wouldn't say that the product portfolio has changed a lot. We see more and more electro-mechanical products, because that is the trend in our industry as more and more locking functions have some form of electro-mechanical components.
Were there any major surprises once you got 'under the hood' at Sargent?
I don't know - that's a very good question. I wonder if we had not underestimated the complexity of the organization. Also, with every older company that you get into you find both good and bad things in the walls, so to speak, of the company. And it took a slightly longer time than we had anticipated to get rid of some of the bad things in the walls. It had not been that well run for that last couple of years before we took over. So we felt there was room for improvement on the management side.
So five years out, has that improvement process met your expectations?
Yes - definitely. It has exceeded those expectations.
Sargent was a pillar of this city's business community for well over a century. As new owners, how has the New Haven community received you?
[Chuckles.] We haven't attracted very much attention at all.
And neither, I would observe, have you sought it.
No. And we're not looking for that. We are completely focused and even somewhat narrow-minded [about] what we are doing. We feel that New Haven is an appropriate place for us for a number of different reasons. We believe that the long traditions that the company and that were built up over many years are worth a lot. And we feel you should never underestimate the value that you have in your people and the experiences they had accumulated over many years. New Haven is also convenient for me - I travel a lot - because [Assa Abloy's] North American operations are headquartered here. You can fly anywhere in the world from here, as long as you're willing to go to Philadelphia or Washington first [the only cities currently with direct service from Tweed-New Haven Airport].
Have you felt pressure on your company to provide equivalent corporate citizenship to what Sargent had provided this community in the past - to sponsor events and participate on boards of directors?
Not so much serving on boards for me. Some sponsoring, yes. We have felt some of that, but not too much, really. Some of the participation on [outside] boards has been taken care of by some [Assa Abloy] managers other than me. I think we are playing a decent role in New Haven, but I don't have to be involved in that personally. I tried the United Way for a while but that didn't work, because I travel so much.
What would you like New Haven to know about you company's participation in the Volvo Ocean Race [formerly the Whitbread Round the World Race, which begins September 23 in Southampton, England]?
We're participating in the Volvo race for a number of reasons, chiefly to draw attention to our group. Assa Abloy is kind of a strange name, so maybe we need to try to explain who we are, and we hope to have an opportunity to do that through the Volvo Ocean Race. But the Volvo Ocean Race is even more important to us internally because we have grown a lot as a group since 1994, mainly through acquisitions of strong companies like Sargent all over the world. Which is good. But with that comes [a threat to] the local pride in these companies; sometimes belonging to a [global] group doesn't mean anything, or it might even be felt as a [negative]. If we are going to be able to take a leadership role in the world then we need to be able to feel as though we are all on the same page in the group. So we need to really get together and take advantage of the strengths that we have in different parts of the group. And that's what we'll use the race for: the theme that we are going to build our integration process around for the next two to three years.
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