ENGLEFIELD INDUSTRIES
Englefield Industries was an iconic company started by Roger Englefield, a pioneer in plastic moulding and vacuum forming.
Alister was approached in 1996 to come in and take over as Managing Director.
Over a period of around two years the company was once again profitable, back on the front foot in the marketplace, and in a position to expand. He led a significant expansion in Australia which saw sales there more than double, the company developed a distributor in Malaysia, and entered the Middle East market via Dubai. As a result of presenting themselves at a trade fair in Dubai (where the stand looked a little like a modern day Roman bathhouse), they attracted the attention of Al Fattaim, one of the large trading houses in Dubai owned by the royal family, who took on the distributorship for Englefield.
At that same fair they also came to the attention of one of the largest bathroomware manufacturers in the world, Kohler, from Kohler Wisconsin, USA. The Englefield logo was a plastic duck, and they took 2500 of these to the fair. They put some out on the stand and by day three they were all still there – they would have lasted about five minutes in NZ. So they started to hand out the ducks to everyone at the fair during one particular session until it seemed like everyone there was supporting Englefield.
On returning to NZ they received a formal approach from Kohler, expressing a desire to purchase the company. This started a lengthy Due Diligence process but finally a deal was achieved and Englefield became part of the Kohler empire. Alister was promoted to President of Kohler Australasia and was tasked with managing the transition and introduction of many Kohler systems. This was a huge transition for the company, particularly for those in leadership positions and after a few months Alister made the decision to leave the company.
Between the time he joined Englefield and the time they were sold revenues had more than doubled to over NZ$40m and the company had gone from making a loss to generating healthy profits.