Extreme makeover

If this company were a reality show, it might be called Extreme Makeover: The Business Edition.

John Ward, chairman and CEO of $1.2 billion Russell Corp., played the role of host and architect to the company's rebirth as a major player in the athletic wear and sporting goods industry He did it through a series of methodical acquisitions and by letting good people do their jobs.

But before the company could grow, it needed to go through a severe teardown. Step No. 1 was to become a competitive global player, and according to Ward, that meant moving from Alexander City, Ala., to the urban and more urbane Atlanta.

"I told them upfront, to be a global consumer products company, the headquarters needed to be in a larger city where transportation was easier, you could recruit from a more diverse work force," says Ward, who was named chairman and CEO in 1998. "These were some of the issues and, of course, we relocated to Atlanta about six years ago."

That was the start of a number of changes Ward directed to get Russell back on a growth track.

"The first three or four years (I was with) the company, we went through a massive restructuring - closing poor businesses and opening many operations down in Mexico and Central America," he says. "We achieved over $150 million of cost savings over that first four years. Yet almost all of that was passed on to our customers in lower prices."

As Ward got the physical assets in order, he also began an overhaul of the company's strategic approach. His intention was to take the company from a mere athletic wear company to a provider of sporting goods equipment, and today, the company markets sporting goods brands including Russell Athletic, Jerzees, Spalding, AAI, Huffy Sports, Mossy Oak, Discus Athletic, Moving Comfort, Bike, Dudley and Cross 4, Creek.

While Ward officially took the top leadership role in March 1998, he began wielding his influence long before that. The company had been searching for a CEO and had approached Ward several times.

After taking early retirement from Sara Lee - where he had served as president and CEO of several of its divisions - and happy to set his own schedule as a consultant, Ward had no interest in giving up his more relaxed lifestyle and repeatedly declined overtures from Russell Corp. to take over as its top executive.

It wasn't until a board member visited with him over the holidays in his Winston-Salem, N.C., home that he agreed to consider it, and even then, the company had to agree to some radical changes.

"There were a number of things I said the company needed to do to be successful, and they had to feel comfortable to do those," Ward says. "That meant a revolution of a company, and if they weren't prepared for a revolution, not an evolution, then I didn't think the company could be successful. Therefore I was not their candidate - because I was not out looking for a position. I was very comfortable.

"Ultimately, the board agreed that these things needed to be done, and we got together and came in and did them."

Ward instituted a three-part plan to get the company back into growth mode, a plan consisting of restructuring, acquisition and cost management, and finally, leveraging the new assets.

"The plan itself constantly changes based on the market," Ward says. "Just like acquisitions; we can't say exactly who we'll be able to acquire. The first phase was massive restructuring of the company to get competitive so that we would have an opportunity to be successful long term.

"That required physically restructuring operations, getting out of businesses that lost money, moving operations, recruiting a different management team, doing an extensive amount of research."

Acquisitions

With the company free of nonperforming assets and with a management team on board with the growth plan, Ward headed into phase two of the operation.

"If we had not done it, it is very unlikely the company would survive more than a couple years," Ward says. "We then, in 2002, said we've got a lot better cost position."

The goal now was to compete long term, and to do that, the company needed to expand its offerings.

"This is where we made the strategic decision that we needed to be a broader company but also to concentrate more on performance products - broader categories, but the products that we went into should have a performance element versus just more basic products," Ward says. "We didn't want to get away from basic but we wanted to grow with performance. And that could be performance within Russell Athletic or within these new companies."

To accomplish that, Ward led the company through a series of carefully researched acquisitions. He says finding the right fit starts with doing your homework.

"We've been told, by both companies that we have acquired and companies that we haven't, that we do more, due diligence than virtually any other company," Ward says. "We devote an awful lot of our time to evaluating acquisitions, both on the business side but also from the culture side and the capabilities of the management team.