The Call
“On the afternoon of 8 February 2022, Dieter Woschitz, our CEO at Schleuniger, called me. I was Managing Director of Schleuniger USA and the subsidiary Cirris in Salt Lake City. In my 30 years of service, I have experienced a lot, but was surprised with the news Mr. Woschitz was sharing: Schleuniger would be merging with Komax, our fiercest competitor. To say I was shocked was an understatement. My head was racing after the call. What would the merger mean for myself and my Schleuniger colleagues? I called my wife: “Honey, I don’t know if I will have a job.”
“The next day, I knew I had to communicate the news to my fellow Schleuniger and Cirris employees. They were just as surprised as I was. One employee asked me on a video call in front of the entire team: “Darren, what are you planning to do now? I had thought about this all night and replied: “Just like you, I need to digest this news first and put my emotions aside. But I am certain that if we bring our values and our skills to the merged company, we will have a future together in the Komax Group.
While Competition Commissions were reviewing the merger, I began to have discussions with Urs Zurkirchen and Tim Macalpine from Komax and John Olsen, whose company Artos was now also part of the Komax Group. I had known all three as friendly competitors for many years, often seeing one other at tradeshows and early on would even refer business to one another. As the years passed the competition between the two companies intensified. Now with the merger, we had to build up a new level of trust. We often visited each other at our different locations in Brookfield, Buffalo Grove or Manchester (USA) to begin developing our US strategy. We quickly came to a common denominator: our customers, providing them with the opportunity to find the best solution from the combined product offerings of Komax and Schleuniger.”