Martin F.C. Emmett, Tambrands Inc..

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: Includes related article - Interview

In the spring of 1989, Tambrands Inc. was a company a drift. The maker of personal care products - whose dominant brand is the Tampax tampon - was suffering from lackluster performance, a disappointing diversification strategy, and the sudden resignation of its chairman and CEO. Its stock was trading at about $30, having run up to that price amid takeover speculation fueled by its business and management turmoil.

Today, the company has been restored to vitality. The diversifications have been wound down and its business strategy has been sharply focused, under the firm hand of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Martin F.C. Emmett, on its core feminine hygiene products.

When he was chosen by the Tambrands board to be CEO in April 1989, Emmett was chairman of an investment banking firm, with Tambrands as one of his clients. Previously, from 1972 to 1983, he had been with Standard Brands Co., rising to president and COO.

With the stock trading comfortably above $60 at the time off a DIRECTORS & BOARDS visit with Emmett in his White Plains, N.Y., office, the Tambrands revival is a good "Governing for Shareholder Prosperity" story - specifically, the creation of $1.3 billion in shareholders value. In the following Q & A with D & B Editor James Kristie, Emmett discusses the philisophies and activities behind that value creation of the past three years and what will drive the long-term values to be created in this decade.

Directors & Boards: Looking ahead broadly, to start, are we going to see a different approach to creating value in the 1990s compared with the M & A-driven era of the past decade?

Martin Emmett: Managements are going to have to pay more attention to such things as quality and product improvement, sticking to the basic of what they do best, and creating inherent value in the products and services that they provide. What happened a lot through the '80s is that there were changes of value going from one party to another, without any change - any improvement - taking place in the company. What we have to do now make better products, make new products that are close to what one knows how to do well, and do possible geographic expansion and decentralization.

D & B: Which is what you are doing here at Tambrands. How easy it that for companies to do - to get back to concentrating on one's core business and focusing a total strategy of renewal and growth around it?

Emmett: It is a very difficult thing for a companies to get back to, because for a long time, companies have been so finance-driven and so distracted by outside circumstances that they have not spent the time trying to improve the basic products or services that they provide. If someone was trying to concentrate on a single product or improve their product, there was a good chance that they'd get taken...