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Rich Gibson joined ChemQuest as a director in 2021 after a more than 30-year career at Milliken & Co. Most recently serving as the company’s director of corporate strategy, his trajectory included roles in operations, business and corporate strategy, corporate development, and more.
Last year, Rich was named a ChemQuest vice president. In addition to assisting clients with projects in the Business Strategy & Transformation, Operational Excellence, and M&A Advisory pillars, he is also now part of our global business development team. I had the chance recently to catch up with Rich, learn more about his background, and hear his thoughts on trends that are influencing today’s business leaders.
What are some highlights of your career at Milliken?
I started my career in manufacturing, and I was able to work with some strong teams and learn from really key people. I began as an industrial engineer, improving efficiencies and cost, and then I got recruited into supply chain management. For three years, I ran supply chain at one of our most complex plants. After that, I got promoted to process improvement manager, which I did for about a year before being promoted to plant manager. It was a fun journey.
In my role as plant manager, I was able to meet with Mr. Milliken, our CEO, on several occasions. He would come to the plant, and I was able to learn a lot from him. It was a really neat experience, and it was great to get to know him.
That encompasses the first half of my career. I then went into strategic marketing, which involved analyzing where the company’s businesses could achieve the most profitable growth. I moved from there into corporate strategy and corporate development, where I spent the latter part of my Milliken career. I essentially worked as an internal consultant for the company for several years.
Part of this involved running the business intelligence office. From a corporate standpoint, we were constantly focused on understanding how markets are growing (and at what rates), as well as identifying indicators that would help us determine how those key markets are going to perform in the future.
Why did you decide to join ChemQuest?
While I was in corporate strategy, we did some work with ChemQuest. The ChemQuest team helped find M&A targets for us. What was interesting is that some of those targets ultimately were the most profitable businesses that we had ever acquired. I had gotten to know ChemQuest through various projects and was impressed particularly with the people — very intelligent, good to work with, and quite accurate in their analyses.
I came to a point where I was able to consider retiring from Milliken, and Dan Murad reached out and talked to me about coming to work for ChemQuest. It was an opportunity for me to take all that internal consulting work that I had done and actually go into the one of the top consulting firms. I recognize a great opportunity when I see it, so this is what I’ve been doing ever since.
Can you share a little more about how your past experiences support your client project work?
I was in charge of helping to set up strategy development at Milliken, determining the best way to create a consistent process from a company standpoint. We put together a method that we used company-wide, and we were able to roll that down into the divisions and then to the businesses. This consistency made it much clearer for people to be able to articulate their strategy so that when they were asking for a budget to support an initiative, for example, they were following a good process that was approved from the top down, and the board understood it.
It really helped us to be able to move projects along faster, and it informed the M&A process as well. Strategy should always lead acquisitions. You need to have the right strategy in the right markets, or you might unnecessarily spend a lot of money in markets that aren’t that attractive. You need to fully grasp the company’s goals, why certain markets are attractive, and the reasons you should be in them (or not in them, whatever the case may be).
Once you have an approved strategy, of course, the question is what to do next. Most strategies don’t ever make it to fruition because people give up on them. We wanted to make sure that we could take these great initiatives to the finish line, and so we implemented a strategy deployment (execution) process. I ran the project management office for that, which was a lot of fun and has been beneficial with my work at ChemQuest as well.
At ChemQuest, we focus on how the client can best improve profitability, increase efficiency, drive toward profitable growth, and so on. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Every client is unique; even divisions within the same company often have different needs and capabilities. I’m able to draw on much of my prior history, whether in operations, strategy development, strategy execution, business intelligence, corporate development, or project management, which all ties into various client projects.
My business intelligence background has also come in handy when supporting clients on the ChemQuest TraQr® range of offerings. The TraQr® Dashboard Global Economic Indicators tool tracks coatings markets and helps companies understand how any market is growing. Since I spent much of my career analyzing this information, I can help clients understand why it’s important and how they can use it effectively. For example, Business Cycle Analysis (BCA) can alert you when a market is transitioning from a recessionary phase to one that’s advancing. This insight gives you advance notice to start investing in inventories, marketing, or hiring. Again, it doesn’t apply only to coatings.
What types of projects have you found the most engaging?
I’ve been involved with a few strategy development projects that have been a lot of fun. From a learning standpoint, exploring additional markets and how they work — and then helping the client better understand those markets to support them in making better decisions — is really rewarding.
These are really win-win situations. We help the clients understand their markets better and get their strategy clarified. They can then share those learnings with their leadership and their board, which helps them better move forward. It’s truly fulfilling work that I enjoy a lot.
What trends are you seeing that are impacting on our clients’ current and future needs?
There’s one thing at the top of everyone’s mind right now: Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs.
One of the roadblocks with the tariff situation is that people don’t know what kind of decisions to make. It’s slowing down decision-making processes because things keep changing and companies are unsure about their best path forward to navigate the situation.
That said, people are increasingly realizing that if they can move production back to the U.S., it’s going to help them avoid any potential tariffs. I think we are going to see more reshoring, whether that involves setting up a facility or shifting select production lines. People are looking to shorten supply chains and also eliminate single-sourcing situations. Ideally, that second supplier would be located in or closer to the U.S., not all the way around the world.
Another trend that we’re not seeing quite yet — but is coming — is lower interest rates. There’s a lot of money on the sidelines that people have been holding onto due to higher interest rates. When those rates do come down, M&A activity is really going to pick up. Private equity firms are now in the position of needing to sell because it’s time — or past time, to be honest. They’ll be selling, and they’ll be buying. When this particular trend kicks off, it’s going to be pretty fast and furious.
Reach out to Rich at rgibson@chemquest.com.
How can we help you? Let’s start talking: https://chemquest.com/lets-start-talking/
