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Parvalux - Part of The Clark Group Of Companies was born on December 19th 1947, this was the inaugural date of the founding company of the Clark Group of Companies Of course back then there was no group, just a visionary in the field of Electric Motors by the name of Leslie James Clark, the founder of what we have become today. That company is Parvalux Electric Motors Ltd and after 60 years of making motors and gearboxes we are still going from strength to strength, 25% growth in the past two years. The journey has not been without its problems, a successful company from the start with rapid growth for 35 years, producing excellent returns year on year but in the mid-eighties we hit a wall, we stopped growing and remained in a cycle of steady decline for the next 15 years or so.
At this juncture I would like to make clear the reasons for the halt in the company's growth. In my opinion it was twofold, the first was the competition caught up because we took our foot of the accelerator. Secondly, I believe that we had all our eggs in one basket, ie THE COMPANY was the Golden Goose that gave the management, at that time the comfort that took away the edge necessary to compete. Money was no longer the driving force behind the business. Money, or rather the lack of it, was the main focus in LJ Clark's ambition to create a company that could, quite simply, produce profit and exceptional profit at that. His financial drive coupled with the fact he was also a first class engineer, and as previously mentioned, a visionary enabled the company to remain ahead of the competition for over three decades!
To explain why I would describe LJC, as he was affectionately known, as a visionary would consume a book but it is suffice to say that he had an extraordinary ability of simplifying all matters of business that removed any concept that would potentially create problems or confusion. His processes would operate the business, without change and enable him to run the company almost single-handed for 55 years! A fantastic achievement, but one that would eventually contributed to our decline for well over a decade!
LJC passed away in 2003 and with him his unique style of management. He left a daughter and a son (my father), the latter was to pass away nine months later at the age of 60. This as one could imagine left a gaping hole in our families lives, two very strong minded and often difficult individuals to deal with, suddenly gone for good! After a year of rebuilding lives and putting the family back on an even keel it was time to make some decisions regarding the Golden Goose, that had by this time lost some of its shine.
What to do with a 55 year old business that for all intense and purpose was in decline. Reputation, Brand, Ambition, even the staff, all had lost shine, so the first decision to make was to either sell or invest time and money back into the business. Either of these decisions required a market update and whether there was a potential buyer or an opportunity to revive the goose. Six months later, my choice was to rebuild the company and not to sell.
So the process began.
At first the task was monumental but this is a statement made in hindsight, in truth we had no concept of what it would really take to rebuild a 55-year-old business in a sector where the threat of Chinese competition was immense. After three years and a little luck, (I will return and explain Luck shortly) I decided to rebuild the company around a world-class team. At the time of writing, 2008 we again have a world-class company, where profits have doubled this year alone and more importantly double-digit growth for the past 4 years. We have a vast array of talent in the business and the buzz and self-belief and team spirit is extraordinary.
Luck is a funny thing to describe and probably even more difficult a word to attach when describing a sequence of events, however for me if the sequence is not planned I call it luck others call it fate. I will try to elaborate so as to lead you to the reason for our renewed success over the past 5 years.
I have been involved in engineering, commercial and residential property for 25 years and more recently providing financial backing to a well known retail company and last year we were involved with its exit strategy. I am fundamental in the decision making running a public unit trust that invests in equity across all the various sectors that one would expect to find associated with the stock market. A solid background but not much luck there I hear you say. However this is where I found myself from those dark days back in 2003 and the luck is this... we have been lucky with the people we have chosen to join our group!
The people we have chosen to work within all our sectors have brought a cross pollination of skills, ideas, enthusiasm, experience, and they have shared in the responsibility of achieving our goals. They are all outstanding individuals and this has produced a phenomenal turn around at Parvalux and given the Group, as a whole, another dimension. All our key-people own a share of the business so in effect they naturally become somewhat entrepreneurial. We encourage different skills within each business in the Clark Group to share ideas and often assist with complex problems outside of their own particular role. It takes a particular type of person to set aside their day-to-day responsibility and participate in the broader picture, often with little or no experience within the given sector but contributing to build the brand of the Clark Group of Companies. We have come a long way from those early days back in 1947 and we still have further to go.
Steven Clark
CEO Clark Group of Companies
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