Interview Steelite As Steelite settles into its buying of the Utopia Tableware brand, Ben Tearall, Steelite’s VP Sales UKI, tells Tableware International how what initially started as a collaboration quickly evolved into an acquisition…
“Steelite has acquired a very successful business with a superb operating platform”
Ben, thanks for speaking with us. Utopia was recently acquired by Steelite, but you were already working closely with them, distributing the brand in the US – what added benefits do you see from having the Utopia brand acquired? 32 TABLEWARE INTERNATIONAL
The actual acquisition was at the end of June but as you rightly point-out, we had been successfully working with Steelite for more than a year in the USA to distribute the brand. Obviously, what started-out as a simple ‘supplier/distributor’ relationship began to develop into something more as we quickly realised there
were synergies at many levels in our two businesses – right from the top with a shared philosophy between John and Mark all the way through to both company’s approach to product innovation, forward planning and customer relationships. In other words, the initial courtship quickly resulted in a firm marriage!
This is the seventh Steelite acquisition under Arbor Investments’ ownership – what is Utopia bringing to the table that Steelite doesn’t already have in its remit? At the risk of stating the obvious, Utopia is by far the largest supplier of Glassware to the UK