Mark Schweizer
Expert Management Consultant / Interim Executive
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About
I am a highly accomplished business executive with a proven track record of driving growth, improving operating performance, accelerating innovation, and increasing shareholder value across a broad range of leadership roles.
I focus on business and commercial strategy, growth market development, innovation for product and process, customer value proposition development, and price optimization to list a few.
Experience
Littlejohn & Co., remote 2022 – Present
Littlejohn & Co. is a private equity firm ($8B AUM) focused on middle-market industrial and services companies.
Operating Partner, Strategy
- Collaborate with investment and executive teams to design and implement strategies for achieving investment thesis objectives.
- Lead strategic initiatives at portfolio companies which lack resources necessary for success.
- Support due diligence activities by assessing strategy and commercial strength and opportunity of acquisition candidates.
NWH is the largest U.S. manufacturer of hardwood with 19 facilities in North America and more than 2,000 customers over 60 countries. Northwest Hardwoods was owned by Littlejohn & Co.
VP, Strategy & Marketing 2019 – 2022
- Developed and lead implementation of overall business strategy and global marketing, with emphasis on price.
- Led implementation of pricing program resulting in 3 percentage point EBIT gain in first year.
- Developed commercial strategy with the potential to double EBIT with minimal invested capital.
- Led post-restructuring strategy designed to build core competencies that would support future acquisitional growth.
- Led transformation of the International Business Unit to a profitable business.
- Focused team on business profitability rather than bulk volume sales resulting in a positive EBIT business for the first time since 2017.
- Introduced standard operating procedures to address poor discipline for collections and claims reducing working capital by 50 basis points.
Cogent Link is a boutique consulting firm providing interim executive leadership and strategy development for technology, engineered goods, and industrial businesses.
Principal / Owner
Select engagements include
- Interim President for cloud-connected building equipment business.
- Interim President for global, early-stage, advanced nanomaterials technology company.
NanoStatics was a startup focused on nanofiber production technology.
President and CEO
- Developed market-back economic and commercialization models of end-use applications resulting in a business plan with data driven timescale/ramp and focused target markets.
- Led transformation of business model to provide in-house application development to accelerate growth and drove acquisition initiative to fill critical capability gaps.
- Led sale of business resulting in a technology licensing/ownership transaction.
Sunpower was the world-leading developer of Stirling engines for ultra-efficient, hyper-reliable critical power generation applications and cryogenic cooling.
President and CEO
- Developed market migration strategy to enable reliable and rapid market entry for new products while supporting and long-term growth in larger markets.
- Grew revenues by 38% and net profit by 50% in first year through introduction of disciplined process, data driven decision making, and customer-centric approach.
- Led all activities to sell the business to a strategic buyer, including positioning, business plans, presentation materials, and banker selection/engagement, resulting in a successful exit.
Diamond Innovations was a leader in highly-engineered materials for material-removal applications in automotive, aerospace, construction, electronics, mining and oil & gas markets.
VP Marketing and Business Development, Sandvik Hyperion 2014 – 2015
A successful merger of Diamond Innovations with Sandvik Hard Materials resulted in Sandvik Hyperion. Responsible for unifying product management, marketing, and business development across merged entities.
- Developed strategy for where to invest for growth and where to drive operational excellence in sales and manufacturing for the combined businesses’ portfolio of products/markets.
- Built a matrixed business-line organization with five global P&L units from the two merged entities.
- Developed performance requirements/metrics for manufacturing cost, delivery, and quality to be a world-class supplier to our customers.
- Designed plans and roadmaps with manufacturing and R&D leaders for achieving performance targets.
- Delivered 15% top-line growth in first year.
Recruited back to lead the company by Chairman and investment leader of the Sandvik acquisition team. Full P&L responsibility for $275M business, with direct reporting of all global functions (Sales, Operations, Marketing, Product Management, R&D, IT, HR, Finance, Legal).
- Developed clear strategy with detailed, actionable plans/KPI’s that delivered 20% revenue growth and an incremental 5 percentage points of EBIT margin (approx. $14M EBITDA).
- Flattened the organization and created a culture of autonomy with accountability resulting in a high-performing organization and a 1.5% EBIT margin lift.
- Developed new customer-centric commercial model: partnerships with key customers; tailored product/service offerings, rewarding hunting rather than farming, and alignment of emerging-market sales organization to end-user application resulting in 20% revenue growth.
- Spearheaded “rapid innovation” approach to R&D resulting in a 400% increase the number new products introduced to market each year and reduced the average time-to-market by 75%.
- Championed Lean as method for improved operations resulting in 20-50% reduction in manufacturing lead-time, a 10% reduction of inventory, two (2) percentage point improvement to gross margins including a 14.5% reduction in manufacturing labor costs.
- Consolidated global manufacturing footprint yielding 4 percentage points of EBIT improvement.
- Rationalized investment of capital and resources with disciplined approach to concentrate business on high-priority growth markets.
Recruited to Diamond Innovations after purchase by Littlejohn & Co. seeking world-class product management capabilities.
- Developed team of direct reports to work as bona fide P&L owners within a matrix organization resulting in improved operations and R&D activities.
- Delivered 10-15% EBITDA growth per annum (excluding ’09 recession)
- Reversed historical -10% per year price decline achieved 3% price increase by implementing value-selling changing narrative to life-cycle economics.
- Grew revenues in Oil and Gas sector by $22M in two years through identifying market-based performance criteria and focusing R&D efforts.
- Integral management team leader during sale of business.
Booz Allen & Hamilton was one of the largest and best-known general management consulting firms prided as the “practical strategist”.
Principal
- Developed practice-area focused on product, marketing , and sales strategy.
- Heavy client engagement in the automotive and related industries.
- Strong use of quantitative analysis and rapid-experiment approach for informing data-driven decision making.
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.S. Electrical Engineering. (GPA 5.0 / 5.0) 1997
University of Cincinnati
B.S. Electrical Engineering. (GPA 4.0 / 4.0) 1995
