Drop by drop, his firm won worldwide success; how Loctite became a leader in liquid adhesives

Nation's Business, July, 1984 by Mary-Margaret Wantuck

LAURA KRIEBLE describes in this way her husband's and son's teamwork in making Loctite Corporation a giant in the field of liquid sealants and adhesives: "Vernon sowed the acorn, and Bob made it grow into a huge oak tree."

Son Robert phrases it a bit differently: "Dad was the outside man--the salesman. I was the inside man--the business manager."

Loctite's sales have increased some 6,000 times--to well over $200 million--since Robert Krieble joined the company 28 years ago. Many Loctite products--which are used by the drop, not the barrel--have wide application in industry, in many cases offering manufacturers new ways to simplify assembly and improve reliability. Others--notably Super Glue--are widely used by individual consumers.

More than 400 machinery, manufacturing and repair chemicals are sold under the Loctite brand name, offering chemical solutions to mechanical problems.

Loctite sealants and adhesives can be found in a host of products, from dishwashers, tractors and golf club heads to speaker assemblies, underground utility junction boxes and automotive vacuum harnesses.

The Loctite story began in 1953 when Vernon Krieble, then head of the chemistry department at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., founded the American Sealants Company (the name was changed to Loctite 10 years later). He had discovered the chemical secret of anaerobic resins--resins that remain indefinitely liquid until deprived of air.

Without air, the resins quickly harden and form a durable bond between any two assembled surfaces that can otherwise have microscopic air spaces between them. Such spaces are breeding grounds for leakage, corrosion and vibration loosening. Unlike conventional adhesives and sealants, Loctite's do not have to be mixed and heated in order to cure into a permanent plastic.

Test marketing on the first Loctite product began in 1955, coinciding with the elder Krieble's retirement from Trinity College. He was 70.

The following year, he amassed $100,000 in venture capital from 73 friends and acquaintances, issuing 10-year convertible debentures with 5 percent interest. (The Krieble family had already invested $15,000.) Most of the debentures were converted into stock. In 1980, that original $100,000 had a book value of $30 million and a market value of $75 million.

Robert Krieble joined the company in 1956 at his father's invitation. A graduate of Haverford College and holder of a doctorate in chemistry from the John Hopkins School of Higher Studies, he was 40 and 13-year veteran of General Electric. He was in charge of spawning chemical businesses for GE. The work, in Pittsfield, Mass., involved process development, prototype manufacturing, marketing and test selling.

"When we got sales up to $1 million or so, when the ink was beginning to turn a little black on the bottom line, we would spin off these businesses to one of the appropriate operating GE companies," he recalls.

He was making good money--$35,000 a year plus stock options--and the future looked rosy. To sacrifice all this for a company whose sales volume was $300 a month and whose customers numbered six seemed ludicrous.

But, he says, "it would have been very difficult to turn Dad down, since making businesses out of laboratory ideas was my profession at the time. So with butterflies in my stomach and the support of my family [wife Nancy, and a son and daughter], I joined up as vice president."

WAS IT DIFFICULT for a scientist to turn business administrator? "I learned the essential skills of management under the pressure of necessity," Krieble replies. "And I give a lot of credit to a course that I took when GE first decided to gamble on me as a manager. Then, too, I ran a laboratory for a while at GE's River Works Plant in Lynn, Mass., where I oversaw 400 people and handled a $4 million budget. All in all, a fair amount of supervisory and fiscal responsibility."

Working under his father, he says, "I did practically every job in the company. All we had were five employes, so I was tapped for such chores as working in shipping and taking boxes to the post office. I was the tech service engineer when there were technical problems, and I was in charge of administration."

The challenges came early on. He describes one graphically: "We were occupying a rented old mill building in Hartford. One Saturday morning, I was awakened before sunrise with the news that our building was on fire. I went charging down to see the firemen dousing the last flames, which had left a huge hole burned right through the middle of the building floor.

"I rushed into the basement, where our inventory was stored around the outer wall. Fortunately, the bottles of sealant were intact, the contents still liquid. Our bookkeeper found the pending invoices and hung them up on a makeshift clothesline to dry.

"When Monday morning came," he continues, "our customers were served just as always, unaware that we were operating with desks around a hole in the floor and a factory that was totally kaput. But we had a couple months' worth of inventory and worked 18-hour days for the next few weeks to get production back on line."