After Paul Scholten was introduced as Stemmer Imaging’s new CEO last fall, there has recently been a change at the top of the company. Was this change planned from the outset? Peter Keppler: Initial publications in August promoted Paul Scholten to be interim CEO. So, you could say it was planned from the outside. However, Paul’s dedication, leadership style and trust in the team were overwhelming. This led us to ignore this initial plan until the employment has ended. It has been a very intense and motivating time that we have used to start a lot of activities at Stemmer Imaging. Anyway, since March 10th, we have a new CEO, Mike Weccardt, and the last seven weeks they were intense too. Mike, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, your career path, and your previous positions before Stemmer Imaging?
Mike Weccardt: I’m sixty-four years young, I’m happily married, and I have two adult kids who follow my path and will be all both married soon. I have sixteen years of C-level experience in European and global organisations like the Douglas Holding and Nike. After that, I have about twenty years of restructuring experience in companies that are in demanding situations. There’s nothing wrong with refinancing merger attempts or change of ownership and fine tuning one or the other aspect of your business model.
Will Stemmer Imaging’s announced roadmap change with you at the helm and what are your strategic plans for the company?
Weccardt: I share Peter’s perspective, that the company, together with Paul, has created a very nice and reliable way forward. During the past years Stemmer was a bit hindered by the change of ownership. You have different occupations, you do different things, and you get sort of defocused from the business. The new roadmap is built on reliable pillars, which I always try to find when working with a company. We’re focusing on revenue growth. This is something that we haven’t been able to do over the last year. We’re doing this with existing customers and a new customer base that we are just developing. We’re in the process of leapfrogging technology solutions. We’re getting more and more electronic and more and more AI which we’re using to move forward. The idea of imaging being a central part of machinery and process development drives us forward. We will expand in markets and in formats. There’s a slight difference between those two. We’ll use some new formats that are pretty uncommon to Stemmer right now. We see ourselves in the service promise to our customers to make their solutions easier, more reliable, and sustainable.
You mentioned new formats: Can you say a bit more about this?
Weccardt: Technology evolves not only in the way we use technology to produce solutions for customers, but also in itself. There are new ways that people deal with technology. There is direct to consumer, and direct to business. That is sort of leaving the old ways of first consulting and then offering an implementation, looking for the product, sourcing the product, and then putting it in scene with your customers. We are following new ways where we can directly supply interested consumers with the right product and we’re doing that on a very global basis.
