AUGUST 30, 2015
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t is often said that “necessity is the mother of invention” and that certainly proved to be the case for Automotive Art when the company’s excellent start to life as a United States business entity was suddenly interrupted by an unexpected development. Perhaps a victim of its own North American success, Automotive Art experienced a severe setback in 2004 when the the company supplying its private label brands was bought out by an American multinational, one of the largest paint manufacturers in the world, and a direct competitor in the automotive paint sector. While this acquisition had no adverse affect on Automotive Art’s distribution network throughout the Caribbean, the United States company soon cancelled its contract for retailing in the continental United States and Canada. This decision now severely restricted where Automotive Art could and could not sell, and management chose to make a clean break and move on. That strategic denial of access into the North American market was a huge blow to the planned expansion of the Automotive Art private label brand but, true to
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its philosophy of “making lemonade whenever thrown a lemon”, the management team immediately set about looking for a new manufacturer. That task proved to be far more challenging than might have been anticipated, since some 90 per cent of that business is controlled by less than ten major companies, and as soon as somebody new appears on the scene with any new and worthwhile technology they are usually quickly snapped up by the big players. That being the case, it was extremely difficult to find a new manufacturer that satisfactorily
matched the Automotive Art needs. Finally, after three years of research and literally searching the planet, visiting every second-tier manufacturer in countries as diverse as Japan, South Africa, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Holland, Glenn Camacho, Chris Maloney and Doug Armstrong eventually found themselves in Poland. Dereck Foster recalled: “We initially went to see a Polish company called Multichem about the possibility of them producing our Automotive Art private label brands, but during the discussions it gradually started to
• From Page 6. Automotive Art’s new presence in the United States was instantly successful, as sales jumped dramatically and cash flow improved hugely, resulting in expansion after expansion. The first sales office shared space with a 7 000 square foot facility, but that was soon increased to 25 000 square foot of its own, and today the office occupies a 65 000 square feet warehouse facility. It was this extraordinary rate of growth, coupled with the security of knowing that the company was now operating in the same environment as the world’s leading companies in its sector, which really encouraged the management team to start truly believing that Automotive Art could be globally competitive. “Automotive Art is still a Barbados-based entity, but the truth is we could never have become a global company if we hadn’t taken the step to relocate our distribution operations to the United States, ” said Hugh Blades
THE MULTICHEM LAB TEAM. (GP) structure and organisation, and most importantly our existing, strong distribution networks outside of Europe. “As a result, the revamped company grew geometrically over the successive three years, which resulted in a complete upgrade of the factory. Our partner and chief executive officer of Multichem, Piotr Muszkieta, is absolutely delighted with the way the business has grown.” The successful acquisition of a shareholding in a paint manufacturing plant was the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that empowered Automotive Art to really start targeting global markets. Now that the company was manufacturing its own products and no longer needed to depend on any third-party suppliers, Automotive Art was free to go anywhere in the world, with no contractual restrictions. For the first time ever, Automotive Art was now completely in control of its global destiny.
enter our minds that there might be an opportunity to actually buy into the company. “Multichem was then owned by two partners: a younger one who was keen to expand and develop the company and an older gentleman who had started to consider retirement. “We could clearly see that it was a very good small company, with excellent technology, so we were keen to partner with them. In the end, after some two years of tough negotiating, we successfully bought out the older partner and became significant shareholders.” So, having first started by manufacturing its own paint products in a small facility in Barbados, Automotive Art thereby became the proud coowner of a state-of-the-art factory in Poland, some 5 000 miles away from home. Doug said: “From the time we closed that deal, we have never looked back. We were able to optimise Multichem’s technical strengths by adding improved