Richman and his team ran into a problem, though, when they told their distributors and other partners they planned to change the company so drastically. With a renewed focus on the professional trades and on solutions to problems, not just new features, Milwaukee Tool set out to provide “disruptive innovation.” Richman said the innovation is most easily seen in the products, but the concept spreads throughout the organization. “Now, a lot of passionate do-it-yourselfers may want a product that performs, but we design products for those professionals and those professional trades.” “We don’t design products for do-it-yourselfers,” Richman said. The company’s main purpose now is to solve problems for those in the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, maintenance and repair, and remodeling trades. “That user segment” is the professional trades. “We had great engineers (but) we had no marketing organization and no plan to really focus on that user segment.” “The problem with Milwaukee is they were focused on what they believed and saw internally,” Richman said. Richman said the new executive team that arrived with him tried to bring an outside-in philosophy in which everyone was focused on users and distribution partners. The other problem was where ideas and feedback came from. There were two main issues for the company in the mid-2000s, Richman said, Milwaukee Tool wasn’t focused on the professional trades and was “dabbling” in a number of areas while “not doing a great job in doing any single one of them well.” His career spans more than 30 years in the industry and includes brands such as Black & Decker, Werner Ladder, Skil and Bosch. Richman joined Milwaukee Tool in 2007, just two years after Techtronic acquired the company. “That was the foundation that when a new group of us came nine years ago, that we sat up and said, ‘We need to go back to our roots,’” Richman said. So how has the iconic brand found itself again? Steve Richman, Milwaukee Tool president, says it is important to look at the company’s focus on professional trades and innovative products, like the first right angle drill and the Sawzall reciprocating saw, in the period after World War II. in the atrium at the company’s Brookfield headquarters. Ty Staviski, chief financial officer and Steve Richman, president of Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. The growth has also been sustained, in the double-digits through each of the last five years, including 22.2 percent revenue growth in 2014 and a three-year compound annual growth rate of more than 20 percent, according to filings by Hong Kong-based Techtronic Industries Co. The growth has been largely organic, save for the acquisition of Mukwonago-based Empire Level Mfg. The company has gone from a focus on corded power tools to cordless tools, power tool accessories and hand tools. Sales have grown over the last decade, from around $500 million in the early 2000s to $2 billion in 2015. There are now more than 700 employees at the site and the expansion plans call for 300 to 500 more in the next five years. Milwaukee Tool officials say the expansion is necessary after more than tripling the workforce at the Brookfield campus since 2009.
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