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• During the last year and a half of the pandemic, Klaus Werner, the CMO for industrial distributor Global Industrial, has spearheaded a rebrand, a website redesign, a heightened focus on customers and a timely elevation of social media channels.
• Werner, a longtime industry executive and the CMO of Global Industrial, didn’t let COVID-19 stop him or the company from achieving some lofty digital goals.
• Recently, Global Industrial rebranded (from its previous parent company name of Systemax) and redesigned its website, which kept Werner and his team busy.
• In addition to ensuring that customer service remained a priority, Werner led Global Industrial’s social media initiative, including a presence on TikTok.
When COVID-19 struck, Klaus Werner and the rest of the leadership team at Port Washington, New York-based Global Industrial knew the pandemic would present a significant challenge on many fronts. They didn’t bat an eye in the face of adversity.
“This was the opportunity for us to sink or swim,” Werner says. “It was a time to focus on fundamentals, focus on listening to customers, observe what’s happening with the market and look at what our competition is doing — and then going out there and taking some risks. Innovation is critical for a business our size because if we don’t innovate or stand out, we’re going to be stuck in the middle. If you don’t innovate, you won’t succeed.”
Innovate they did. And for his efforts in a host of digital innovations, Werner was selected as one of five winners of MDM’s 2021 Digital Innovator awards.
Global Industrial indeed has a different look and feel now than it did at the onset of the pandemic back in March 2020. For one, the holding company has recently rebranded from Systemax Inc. to Global Industrial Co. (“Global Industrial” had long been the go-market name for the industrial distribution business.)
A new experience
As part of that rebrand, the company also redesigned its website, modernizing the look and feel of the site and creating more of a B2C experience, Werner says.
“We went through a very robust rebranding,” he says. “We really modernized the brand look and feel, making it a lot more contemporary, but also the brand voice with the colors and the bold capitalization. Once you see an ad from Global Industrial, you will never forget it. Once you hear our tongue-in-cheek language, you will never forget us.”
He also oversaw the creation of Global Industrial’s Knowledge Center, a “digital content-rich resource designed to empower customers with the expert advice and know-how on the topics they need to succeed and grow,” as the company describes it.
“It’s all about providing customers information so that they can solve their problems,” Werner says.
Werner says the company has also invested time and energy into social media, even posting videos to the popular platform TikTok.
Through all of these changes, Global Industrial hasn’t missed a beat. The publicly traded company routinely saw revenue and earnings increase during the past year, and 2021 has gotten off to a sizzling start. In the first quarter, the company — which formerly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “SYX” and now goes by “GIC” — reported sales for the first quarter of $251.1 million, up 10.5% from the year-ago period.
As Werner says, when the company can measure success with metrics like revenue growth or improved profitability, that makes it easier to sell some of his innovative ideas to the rest of Global Industrial’s C-suite.
“All of this needs to be based on a thoughtful and disciplined approach, a thoughtful and disciplined business case. It needs to be data-driven,” Werner says. “That’s my philosophy of marketing — if you can’t measure it, don’t do it. But I have to be an evangelist. There’s a lot of technical things that we needed to do and are still doing for us to drive transformation and innovation.
“But when you start delivering results, you’ll continue to get the funding to continue to do the things that are going to help grow your business.”
The post Global Industrial Expands Its Digital Footprint, Elevates Social Presence appeared first on Modern Distribution Management.
