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

If production had not resumed quickly, he says, "we would have been out for keeps." The company had been founded on a technical discovery for which no apparent need existed. Customers had to be made to see that a liquid resin was better than any mechanical alternative. This could only be achieved through on-the-job engineering and elimination of problems that customers had accepted as unsolvable. Even a temporary halt in shipments--there was no other source of supply--could have resulted in clients' backsliding to mechanical means.

ONE YEAR AFTER Robert Krieble joined the company, sales reached $100,000. Four years later, they were $1 million. Krieble credits the company's philosophy of "strategy on the one hand and people on the other" with being a major force in its mushrooming success. Strategy entailed having salesmen with engineering backgrounds who could design product applications with the close backup of the company's laboratory.

Strategy also meant pointing to an extremely favorable cost-benefit ratio; though the resins were expensive, their use resulted in production savings many times the cost. And it meant a massive ongoing publicity campaign for the company's products.

Last, but perhaps most important, was developing a "missionary zeal" among employes so that they worked for "self-fulfillment quite as much as for financial rewards," Krieble notes.

A code of employe-manager behavior is encapsulated in the company's "bible," a single-page statement called "The Loctite Way." It says productive employes are those who are praised for good work, whose opinions are considered, whose involvement is seen as vital to the company's operation, who are free to develop.

The statement tells managers they can function best by providing a sense of direction, by guiding employes' development and by offering an atmosphere that encourages open and constructive confrontation.

In addition, Krieble says, "We have a horizontal hierarchy as well as a vertical one. We allow people who have enormous talents in a particular job to acquire greater and greater skills in that job. Likewise, when we can, we enable those who have what it takes to manage a group of employes so that they work harmoniously and happily."

Vernon Krieble died in 1964, and his son succeeded him as president and chairman. "My father was a very strong person in my life--a very warm human being," he says.

Loctite today has close to 2,500 employes, has made several domestic acquisitions and has carved out a highly visible image abroad, with plants, offices and other installations in almost 20 countries.

Its U.S. industrial group, based in Newington, Conn., where the company is now headquartered, includes the division that makes applicators for Loctite products. "One of our unique contributions is giving our customers the entire process: the product in addition to the machine or tool to use it," Krieble notes. An example is an applicator system that Loctite designed and built to apply sealant to the hubs of rear axles at the Buick division of General Motors.