What's your job about?
Bridgestone is the largest tyre company in New Zealand and I manage every tyre the company sells that does not go on the road, which includes tyres for tractors, loaders, dump trucks and forklifts, collectively referred to as Specialty Products.
My role is a national management position where I look after all aspects of the Specialty Products category and a small team of regional managers. This includes setting annual budgets, determining what products to bring in, ensuring my team reaches their sales targets, looking after large national customers, targeting new business, developing training material, product performance evaluation and the list goes on. A normal week for me would consist of a 50/50 split between the office and the field.
Although a significant amount of time is spent doing data analysis and strategy planning my job also takes me all over New Zealand and even the occasional international trip to insure I have my finger on the pulse and I understand my customers’ needs and the changes in the market. Today I could be in the office, tomorrow at the bottom of a quarry and the next at a tyre store in Tauranga. They say a variety of the spice of life and my job provides it in bucket loads.
What's your background?
I grew up on a sheep and beef farm in the middle of the King Country and, like many rural children, was sent off to boarding school in Hamilton for my High School years. My parents always pushed my brothers and me to find our way in life and although the family farm will always be there, they didn’t want us to consider farming as our inevitable career so after school I went to university. After graduating I did a 2-year OE in the United Kingdom where I held a handful of jobs to help fund my travels through Europe, which is something I recommend everyone in their twenties to do. It wasn’t until I returned to New Zealand that I started to look for a career role and as I majored in marketing while at university, I started looking for roles to match. That’s when I came across an ad for a Marketing Coordinator position at Bridgestone which stood out over other roles as a true marketing position when many others were glorified merchanded jobs. After a couple of interviews, I was lucky enough to be offered the role, I even turned down a position at Coca-Cola to take it and I’m glad I did as over 15 years later I have achieved such a lot at Bridgestone. Starting in the graduate marketing role I soon moved up through various regional sales roles and into national before reaching my current national category management position.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Although my farming background did give me a leg up in getting a role managing agricultural products it by no means guaranteed it. I always believed it is a person’s personality and commitment that are more important than their experience. As long as a person has a sound background their future progress will be determined by their personality and commitment to the role. Technical and product-specific knowledge can be taught but empathy, courtesy, moral fortitude and good work ethics are key traits to possess but are difficult for a business to train.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
No two days are the same which is what I love about the job. Some days I am deep in data analysis mode to calculate budgets for the coming year or determine what price to set for a new product. While other days I am out in the field, training the sales team, meeting key customers at the largest mines in the country or inspecting products in the middle of a field in Marlborough. If I was stuck in the office all day every day I would not have lasted as long as I have at Bridgestone.
What are the limitations of your job?
Being a large multi-national company Bridgestone can, at times, be weighed down by processes and procedures. Although this can be a good thing as it maintains consistency throughout the business and ensures things are done properly and appropriate approvals and evaluations are done, it can hinder my ability to react quickly to changes in the market and at times can allow for the competition to beat us to the punch.
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