Paul Bristow

Provided strategic vision and direction to the built-in cooking product portfolio, including the wall oven, cooktop, and warming drawer product lines worth approximately $500 million in annual revenues. Reported to the VP of Cooking and managed one Senior Product Manager.

• Grew product-line revenue by 82% and contribution margin by 65% between 2011 and 2019, primarily driven by significant new product launches and cost reduction activities, combined with key model promotions and retail floored model repositioning.
• Increased market share in 2019 by 1.5% in a down market, expanding unit volumes by 8% to meet budget.
• Directed annual New Product Development (NPD) spend of approximately $30 million.
• Launched industry-first in-oven Hot-Air frying mode, voice-activated smart oven doors, self-clean French-door wall ovens, and industry exclusive Advantium® Speed-cooking oven combination models.
• Established key roadmap themes. Wrote user stories and defined requirements for design and engineering teams. Measured adoption, usage data, and business impact of launches.
• Proactively captured customer and consumer feedback. Conducted in-home user interviews, focus groups, and online surveys. Mined data for trends and product or feature ideas,
• Earned JD Power 2015 “Highest Customer Satisfaction” award for Wall Ovens, as well as numerous other awards from Consumer Reports, Reviewed.com and Digital Trend magazines.
• Led cross-functional team to develop strategy and tactical plan for a new vent hood joint-venture and partnered with strategic suppliers in Italy and Mexico to develop new product-line offerings at reduced costs with increased functionality.
• Collaborated with internal Sourcing team to streamline supply-chain for sourced finished-goods and reduced number of vendors from six to two.

These roles provided leadership to AZDEL’s global product & market development efforts, including the development, launch and maintenance of all product-lines working closely with customers and internal resources to ensure consistency in product strategy.

• Instrumental in the rapid growth of the AZDEL SuperLite® business, taking the product line from revenues of $4.0 Million in 2000 to $100 Million in 2011. Grew US automotive headliner substrate share from 2% to 25%, with booked business to grow share to around 40% by the end of 2013.
• Conceived and implemented flexible stage-gate NPD process and simultaneously launched several new products with incremental revenues from $4.0 Million in 2007 to around $30 Million in 2010.
• Led recovery of $8.0 million in past-due account receivables.
• Led development of AZDEL IXIS® composite automotive body-panel material portfolio which received the 2007 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Excellence in Technology.
• Set pricing guidelines and margin requirements, led competitive analysis, maintained NPD process, and managed the end-to-end product-lifecycle.
• Managed organizational changes through acquisition by Hanwha, and through the Great Recession in 2008.
• Managed various departments as the size of the business grew, including Commercial Technology, Sales & Marketing, Customer Service, Information Technology and Legal. Led implementation of SAGE ERP system.