DAMPA_75_years_of_quiet_design_ENG - Flipbook - Page 192
Bahr observed DAMPA to be a small and loss-making business, but one with an outstandingly good international reputation in its sector. As he puts it, ‘the size of the brand was
far greater than the size of the company.’ In broad terms,
turnaround management involves matching products to viable markets and cutting away as much else as possible –
but when Bahr actually came to applying the theory, he
found that each of his fellow directors and managers was
insistent that their own area was absolutely vital and could
not be cut.
On initial meetings with Jack Van Geel, however, Bahr found
him to be a robust individual who appeared determined to
make deeper cuts than appeared to him to be necessary.
Caught between experienced colleagues who wanted to
develop DAMPA in positive ways and Van Geel who was
determined to downsize, he returned to Trolle to ask that the
brake be gently applied. Inevitably, this intervention angered
Van Geel, though fortunately the two soon developed a
mutual respect which later developed into a friendship.
192
Within a year, Bahr’s turnaround strategy was achieving the
desired result of a small profit and so in January 1997 Van
Geel bought the remaining 51 per cent of shares from F.L.
Smidth to become the sole owner. In October 1997 Bahr
was invited to join the Group Management Team and in April
1998 was made managing director of the entire Van Geel
Metal business in addition to his leadership role in the combined Van Geel DAMPA.
DAMPA produced standardised ceiling types for buildings
and ships, while Van Geel’s ceiling production was more
focused on bespoke solutions. Through Van Geel’s ownership, DAMPA gained access to a sales office in Hong Kong,
to which its employee in Kuala Lumpur was relocated. This
was intended as a springboard into the Chinese market, but
an early success was the supply of ceilings for stations on
an extension to the Hong Kong Metro.
Bahr and Jack Van Geel agreed that Van Geel DAMPA
should be grown through acquisition. They noted with interest that a major American maker of ceilings, the Chicago
Metallic Corporation of Chicago, Illinois, recently had built a
new ceiling factory at Wijnegem in Belgium to mass-produce standardised ceiling designs for the European market.
Unfortunately, this was achieving lacklustre results due in
part to market saturation and in part on account of a sharp
downturn in construction caused by the early-1990s recession.
