精英專訪：Stephan Pudwill 創科實業策略規劃總裁

That we really don't have control over and the aspects of our business that we do have control over, we're not going to change. We're going to continue on investing in new product, continue on investing in the right geographies, continue on investing in the right categories that we feel are areas that give us opportunity to expand into. You know, what my viewpoint is, it's kind of hard to say. I mean, you know, maybe they do, maybe they don't. Does it have an effect? What I can tell you is that even when we went back in time over the past few years when there have been bumps along the way, we've been able to outgrow the market and continue on taking market share. I don't think it's going to have a great effect. I don't think it's... I mean, like I said before, as long as we continue on investing in the new product, I think we're going to continue on doing what we've been doing these past few years, and that's growing and taking market share.

If we delivered an outstanding first half of the year and from what we see so far, the momentum continues to be strong as we go into the second half of the year. Now we obviously don't have any control over the macroeconomic environment, but the new product that we're launching to the market obviously is key for us driving our growth and taking market share gains. So we're on track for the second half and we feel comfortable we're going to deliver our internal targets. Europe looks like it's obviously getting out of recession and starting to improve. The data in the U.S. in general has been quite positive. We don't want to depend on improvements of the economy. What we want to do is we want to challenge our people to grow by taking market share through developing innovative, exciting new product and going to new categories and help find ways that we can improve the performance of products.

Headlines are obviously pointing towards improvement in the European economy. Our strong performance in the first half of the year was largely because we were able to take market share. Our two strongest divisions in Europe in the first half were floor care and our industrial tools division. So a lot of our growth was taking share. Now things really do get better and the economy gets better in Europe. That's good news. That means we have more opportunity and we have more momentum behind us. So that's good. We feel very confident and we like the fact that the economy is pointing in the right direction. But our market share in North America is higher than what it is in Europe, and there's a lot of room for us to continue on taking share in the European markets. Obviously we have very aggressive goals and we're going to try and capture as much air as possible.

Staff costs actually went up less than revenue, so there was leverage. And I think if you go back in time, in an environment when commodity prices have increased, RMB has appreciated and wages in China have appreciated, we've been able to continue on driving the profitability in the gross margins of the group. So wage increases in China is not something which is new. This is something that's been happening over the last few years, so it's something we've been able to deal with very well, and we've been able to increase the profitability of the group even in an environment when there has been pressures.

We don't need acquisitions to grow. We can grow with the brands we have today. Acquisitions present themselves from time to time. Something interesting comes along, we look at it, if it makes sense, we consider whether or not it actually fits our portfolio and then we contemplate whether we want to make this acquisition. We just bought Oreck. Oreck is a floor care company, so it's in the floor care segment of the market, but it's in the commercial segment of the market. So this complements our existing floor care business which was predominantly retail.

My expectations are very high and I love being a part of TTI. I'm actively involved in all areas of the business, and my expectations are aligned with the other senior executives of the company. It's aligned with the shareholders, and that's to increase shareholder value. It's to drive innovation and really help take the company to the next level.