Arnita Wofford – Univar's definition of „success”!

You are the Head of Marketing Personal Care Europe, Middle East and Africa in a very big company. Can you tell us about your daily obligations?

I handle all of our external (journalists) and internal communications (explaining to the team what the strategy or campaign is, what products we need to be pushing, if there are any new ones etc.). I also manage our technical organization – we have two laboratories, one is in Versailles France, and another one in Brussels Belgium. Because we have two locations I need to keep a constant dialogue with the formulators about ongoing projects to make sure each campaign is a success. We also have commercial local technical managers, whom I call „on-the-ground technical team”, the team consists of technical managers from each country and I have to make sure they have all the information they need and check if they have any technical questions for the laboratory team. They support our internal commercial team. This is a typical daily routine, but does not include organising exhibitions, internal presentations or in general – giving speeches or interviews, just like today.

We received information about the new Personal Care Technical Excellence Center in Versailles during the vacation so it is quite a new facility. How has it changed and developed your work and work of the whole company?

We are very fortunate to have been able to open this center on the campus of ISIPCA, a leading institution for post-graduate studies in perfume, cosmetics, and food flavor formulation. We are very excited about working with such a great school because it is a valuable collaboration. We are not only involved with their laboratories, but we also work with students, staff, and exchange ingredients knowledge, as well as give lectures.  We really try to impart our knowledge of the cosmetic industry to the students, who will pass it further. It is also great marketing experience and exposure for Univar. Do not forget, these students are quite probably future chemists and cosmetic formulators. It is also important for us, because now we have a reinforced technical laboratory team – a bigger team will be able to focus a little bit more on luxurious and prestigious products in Versailles and more on masstige products and mass market products in Brussels. This step forward also shows that Univar is investing in Personal Care, our core market.

As I listen to you I'm starting to think that Univar is the best example of the HPCI idea of Science2Business…

Oh, thank you. We are now positioning ourselves to be the number one distributor in EMEA, especially from a technical standpoint. We train our people and both by webex and hands on lab days, send them to our suppliers to be trained as well, and bring in young people from ISIPCA to learn from us. Univar benefits by being on the ISPICA campus, but we also give back to the community.

You have wide experience in cosmetic business, because you used to work in L'Oreal and Seppic. The branch is the same, but positions are pretty different. How could you compare it and how does it help you?

Working in L'Oreal was a very interesting experience, mainly because it was my first contact with the cosmetic industry. I was really focused on learning how to put together raw materials, understanding what different ingredients do, what chemistry works best together, what to avoid. I think that it set the pace for having a full picture of the cosmetic industry and then when I moved to Seppic I worked in sales so it was like taking that laboratory and technical knowledge and deploying it as a sales specialist. I was learning product management, setting up products and positioning each product. That was in the US and when I moved to Europe in Seppic I was mostly working as a technical coordinator for all of our technical service centers so it was a little bit like what I do now. Thanks to that, I was able to work with different labs, countries and customers and  to understand the needs of a global company.

I see one more difference between these companies – broad product offering. I have read that Univar has 11,000 products in the offer from cosmetics through pharmacy to even agriculture, but working in Personal Care branch – what number of products' portfolios do you need to run?

Yes, it makes a difference, but like you said – I focused only on Personal Care so that narrows this number down. Then, in Personal Care I focus only on our strategic suppliers so it narrows it down again to about 12 product portfolios. It is still a huge number of products but it is not as vast as 11,000!

Your work is also connected with travelling, so I guess that Univar appreciates direct contact with customers, not only phone calls or mailing, like most new, small companies do. Why is it so important to you?

I try to meet each team at least once every three months whether it is an introduction of a new campaign or whether I am going to see a key supplier in the region or just making a technical visit or seminar. I have direct contact with the sales team and local area business managers. We are also constantly on the phone with each other but like you said – face to face contact or getting in touch with people is the most important thing. My first contact is very often on the phone or by Skype and if things progress, both sides decide to meet face to face. During the day, our mailbox can be completely full and we do not devote our time to a particular mail so when we have an opportunity to sit, drink coffee and explain everything with the client – we do not waste the chance. 

Furthermore, anytime I go to a different country, I typically take a tour around supermarkets, shops, department stores, the most prestigious outlets etc. When I arrived in Poland, I immediately wanted to see where people buy things and what kind of products they purchase. Thanks to that I have a general insight into prices, products and major brands available on the market. You can obviously gather that information through many different tools but it is great to be able to see it first hand.

You asked also about smaller companies. Especially those starting up, cannot afford to invest as much as big firms, who decide to come to HPCI fairs and as you know – travelling generates costs. But for us, there is nothing better than being here in Warsaw in such a huge event and meeting people face to face.

You talked about your tour around Polish shops in order to get to know the market. So what are your observations on the Polish cosmetic industry?

So far I feel it is a healthy market. The number of small players, especially in colour cosmetics is impressive for such a niche market. You have a lot of small contract manufacturers, who do not only make products for major brands, but also for themselves so the number of products on offer here across all price points is very attractive. In terms of skin care and hair care I see that you are still very dependent on international brands and that was something that surprised me about the Polish market.

We can read on your website that your mission is to be „the place where people want to work”, so the simplest and most obvious question – why do you want to work for Univar?

It is the best job I have ever had. I really enjoy the connection with people and the fact that every team member is very dedicated to the job, they are happy to be at work. When I visit other countries, it is extremely rare to see people who are not happy. Mostly I see people smiling, satisfied with products which they are selling, the way that company makes it easy to do their job. There is not a lot of red tape to get through for you to go and sell a product or take on a new supplier or to create a new marketing campaign. The main goal, which is to sell more and be more visible on the market, is as easy as possible whether you are sales or marketing specialist. My co-workers do not say „Oh dear, I have a report to write” or „Oh my God, I have 15 meetings to attend” so it shows that, what we called „Univar network”, is doing well.

„Univar network”…?

Oh yeah, sorry! It could mean several things. It depends exactly on what are you referring to. For example we have a huge distribution network, massive I would even say! We are one of the two largest global distributors across all the market segments that we deal with. We are able to take a product into one warehouse and distribute it all over the world or to take a product into many warehouses and then deliver it again and disseminate it worldwide. We are really capable of breaking down and facilitating the distribution process for our customers.

The second meaning, which probably refers more to my last answer, is the internal network, which is also very strong. It is all about great communication. I can easily find out what is happening in the US, China or South America and contact our teams there. We share our opinions. There is even a newsletter broadcast to the entire company that goes out every Friday and talks about what is going on, gives us messages from the CEO, from presidents of particular zones and also news from our co-workers, even on a more personal level.

Can we sum up our conversation, that Univar developed from a typical technical company to company where the customer is in the middle…?

I can only speak about Personal Care but when you look back two years ago, you can see a huge reorganization into focused and vertical industries and that leads to more accountability. When people can be held accountable, customers are satisfied. I will give you another example of facilitation of the job. There are no problems like „Who is responsible for what?”. There is only one person for each industry that makes the final decisions and it really helps when you are trying to build a customer's confidence, solve an issue, source a product for them that may not be in your particular zone. If only one person has to say „Yes, let's go and do that”, it is a much easier task. Our goal is to be more profitable obviously, but in being more profitable, we have to put the customer first.

It should be the master idea of any company! Thank you for the interview and have a nice time in Poland!

Thank You also and greetings to all your readers.

Adam Zalewski