Clean start
Not many startups can say they come with more than 30 years of industry experience.
But Wilton-based Sun Products, which formed last fall, can make that claim. It is now building on its legacy and creating a workplace mentality embracing two corporate cultures.
Sun Products is an amalgamation of Huish Detergent Corp. and the laundry product arm of Unilever”™s U.S. operation.Â
Huish was a detergent company founded in the garage of Dan Huish in Salt Lake City and built over 30 years into a billion-dollar operation. Huish was sold to Vestar Capital Partners two years ago.
“Huish Detergent Corporation was a leading producer of retail brand products and its own national brand label,” said Neil DeFeo, CEO of Sun Products.
DeFeo was on the board of directors at Huish and Dave Lundstedt, now president of Sun Products was the CEO of the company.
“Once Vestar Capital owned Huish, as luck would have it, Unilever Corporation decided it was going to sell its North American laundry brand business,” DeFeo said.
The businesses investors at Vestar bought the Unilever segment and with it brought along its general manager, now general manager and executive vice president of Sun Products, Bill Littlefield.
“In North America we had the Wisk brand, the All brand, the Snuggle brand, and the Surf brand,” Littlefield said.
The deal acquiring the Unilever detergent brands was closed on Sept. 8 of last year.
After the deal, Gretchen Crist, came on board as the senior vice president of human resources and Kris Kelly as the executive vice president and CFO.
Crist said the company has 3,300 employees with a Wilton headquarters, offices in Salt Lake City and Toronto, manufacturing facilities scattered across the country and a research and development center in Trumbull.
DeFeo said creating cohesiveness between two companies, one from an international corporation background and the other from a family owned business, was a challenge.
“We are a company that”™s less than a year old, but we have brands and associates that have been involved with these businesses for years,” Littlefield said.
Because members of the Unilever staff who had experience selling detergent didn”™t come with the deal, hiring was also imperative to get the wheels of Sun rolling, Lundstedt said.
“We”™ve had to hire about 150 sales associates across the company,” Crist said. “It”™s been a perfect opportunity for us; there”™s great talent and lots of it out in the marketplace, though the process in hiring people takes longer.”
DeFeo said because of the need to keep the business running, human resources became a very strong portion of the business.
“You can”™t have two separate businesses,” DeFeo said.
Crist said integration became a defining issue of the company mentality as it stands today.
“Bringing two cultures together takes time,” Crist said. “We”™ve spent a lot of time defining what we want that to be.”
Littlefield said that Sun Products was able to use the company”™s consolidation as an opportunity to create an ideal setting for their staff members.
“We”™re trying to design what”™s right and best,” Littlefield said.
DeFeo said one of the most unique examples of how their culture has developed, even in less than a year, is their approach toward bonuses for management.
“We believed that everyone should be on the bonus system,” he said. “If the company does well, then everyone does well. If I get a bonus, the person at the Salt Lake City facility sweeping the floor gets a bonus and if he or she doesn”™t, I don”™t.”
The company instituted its own economic mentality in the workplaces called “MOF,” or money-on-the-floor, to encourage employees to look at the efficiency of their jobs, with the goal of reducing “MOF.”
“Money on the floor equals ”˜MIP,”™ money in the pocket,” Crist said. “It”™s really taken hold.”
DeFeo said the economy has been a friend and an enemy.
“Difficulty in the economy is making consumers very cost conscious and we happen to make a lot of products that are at the value level in category,” he said. “It”™s our enemy in the fact that consumers having more money is good for everybody, but we can”™t control it. What we can do is give the consumers what they want when they want it and that”™s what we”™re trying to do.”
DeFeo said Sun Products is in the process of building a new research and development facility in Trumbull.
“The need for improvement is constant,” he said.