Geeraert dreams big to push innovation

Monroe, Ohio — When Filip Geeraert wanted to reduce Deceuninck North America's back orders to zero, members of his own team told him the goal was impossible.

Today, the president and CEO beams with pride now that his division near Cincinnati is the only one within the global window and door company to reach that goal.

Geeraert draws inspiration from the recent biography, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” the story of another big dreamer who has disrupted the automotive, space, energy and e-commerce industries.

“It is a great book from the point of view that nothing is impossible,” said Geeraert who has the word, “Innovations” hanging in script type as a two-foot horizontal sign above his desk in Monroe.

Geeraert believes focusing on output and production instead of the customer can lead companies down the wrong path. To that end, the avid reader purchased the book, “Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Customer,” for his eight direct reports and other top managers after reading it this past Christmastime.

“It's such an easy read on how you put customers first,” he said, adding that he gave his staff 15 questions to answer along with the reading assignment. Another 25 staffers have since read the book, making sure the team is in lock step and empowered to make positive change for customers.

“My mantra, people know, is dream, believe, achieve,” said Geeraert, who breaks down the dream as his big goal, believe as the five-year plan and achieve as the projects to complete the plan.

This quest for improvement seems typical for Geeraert who took an atypical path to the top spot at Deceuninck North America. Geeraert served as the company's CFO, which he said made it unlikely he would eventually be CEO.

“When my predecessor left, I said, ‘I'm putting in for that job,' which is not straightforward. They never took a CFO to take the top spot. But I said, ‘this position in this company needs stability,'” said Geeraert, who has been CEO since 2011. “If there is too much turnover in [the CEO] position you cannot create a legacy. You cannot build. You cannot create a strategy that you can realize. So, I formed a team and I have been very blessed. We have open conversations, open discussions. We have a lot of fun and the sky is the limit.”

Big goals are nothing new for Geeraert and Deceuninck North America, the third-largest window and door manufacturer in the U.S. This month, the company celebrates the grand opening of its new extrusion facility in Fernely, Nev., near Reno. The new 150,000-square-foot manufacturing facility will add to the 600,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity (and 300,000 for warehousing) already online in Ohio. The 57-year-old Geeraert believes the new facility will improve the company's reach in the western U.S., cutting down on transportation costs and delivery time.

Deceuninck North America generated $120 million in sales in 2015 and expects to continue its double-digit growth for the fifth year in a row in 2016. Global sales are $750 million for the publicly traded company, which is on Belgium Stock Exchange. Most of the sales come from its core manufacturing business, but 8 percent now come from a new division focused on compound formulations.

“[This] is limited, but really technical. That can go to any industry you might think of. That can go to the building industry, automobile or medical,” Geeraert said of the division that is only two years old but is already a profit center borne from the company's R&D team.

The U.S. housing market is a mixed bag for Deceuninck, which got off to a strong first quarter thanks to new housing starts. But with a product mix that is 50 percent new construction and 50 percent remodeling, Geeraert says most would expect low growth from companies like his given that new construction is growing in single digits and remodeling is flat.

“But we are doing much better. Where does that come from? That's primarily coming from our new business that we have been acquiring in the last year, which is starting to pick up. Half of our growth is organic and the other half is new business. New business can be defined as new product lines with existing customers, or completely new customers that we are acquiring from our competition,” he said, crediting his company's vision of providing sustainable products that is resonating with customers.

What keeps Geeraert up at night?

“There's a lot of things sometimes. But I'm always thinking, ‘What's the next innovation? What will be our next differentiator where we can ahead of the competition again or the market?' Everybody's catching up, so if you don't continue to think, ‘what's the next innovation' at one point in time people will go by or be ahead of you,” he said.