Profile in Leadership
A Strong Sense of Stewardship
Theodore Lapres III, MBA ’79, President and CEO, Nypro
Lapres’ ascension wasn’t as dramatic as Truman’s or Graham’s, but, like them, he would have to prove himself quickly. Nypro badly needed a leader to renew its sense of mission.
In 1998, longtime owner Gordon Lankton (Cornell ’53, mechanical engineering) had sold Nypro to its employees, making it one of the largest employee-owned firms in the U.S. Then, in 2002, Lankton moved up to serve as chairman. His successor as president and CEO began pushing in directions that many felt conflicted with Nypro’s core principles.
“He’s got a clear, clear focus, but he’s not out pounding the drum and being strident... He does things in a quiet and determined manner.”
– Jim Peck, corporate VP and general counsel, Nypro
“I had to step away from the things that I was comfortable with on the financial side — to let other people handle that — and spend much more time with the customers, with our engineers, with people in the plants,”
– Theodore Lapres III, MBA ’79, President and CEO, Nypro
“He wanted to grow much more quickly than we could sustain as
an Employee Stock Ownership Plan company,” Lapres says.
“It was a rocky time. There was a lot of unrest and tension,” recalls
Aaron Lazare, MD, dean and chancellor emeritus at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School and a member of Nypro’s board.
When the position opened up in 2006, the board tapped Lapres,
then chief financial officer, as interim president and CEO. Five
months later, they made it a permanent appointment.
“It came out of left field for me,” says Lapres. “I stepped into this
CEO role unexpectedly and knew right from the beginning I would
have to do a lot of learning on the job.”
Clearly, Lapres has learned well. Since 2006, in his quiet and
purposeful way, he has led Nypro through the biggest reorganization
in its 50-plus year history. He also has steered the company
safely through the global recession. Now, he’s helping Nypro to
fashion a strategy for future growth.
Based in Clinton, Mass., Nypro designs and manufactures
injection molded plastic parts for products that touch our lives
in many ways: cell phones, home appliances, drug dispensers,
cosmetics packaging, and beverage containers, to name just a
few. When Lapres joined the firm as corporate controller in 1988, Nypro had $80 million in revenues. By 2008, annual sales had
climbed to nearly $1.2 billion.
Lapres came to the CEO’s post with strong credentials, of course.
“He’s totally honest, and he’s a very smart guy,” Lankton says.
“Everybody respected him.”
His background in finance was impeccable, Lankton adds, and
Lapres had learned about other aspects of corporate operations while
chairing the board of Nypro’s business unit in Singapore.
But Lapres understood that to succeed as CEO he would need a
crash course in all things Nypro. “I had to step away from the things
that I was comfortable with on the financial side — to let other people
handle that — and spend much more time with the customers, with
our engineers, with people in the plants,” he says. “In the first two
years, I made a vow to visit all of our 30 to 40-plus operations around
the world, and as many of our customers as possible.”
He listened to everyone he met and also used those visits to
outline the vision that his leadership team was creating for Nypro.
New Agenda
Under a new, more customer-focused strategy, Lapres and his team
have redesigned the firm. First, they got Nypro out of ventures that
didn’t match its strengths. For example, one subsidiary manufactured
robots. “Making robots wasn’t something we were good at,” Lapres
says. So Nypro sold that unit, plus others that made a poor fit.
They also transformed the heavily-matrixed, regional organization
into a company composed mainly of three global business units.
The first business serves the consumer electronics market, with an emphasis
on wireless. “Nokia has been our largest customer for a number
of years,” Lapres says. “RIM [Research in Motion] will be our largest
customer this year, making plastic housings for Blackberry devices.”
The second unit serves customers in health care: Nypro makes
precision parts for medical devices such as insulin pens for Eli Lilly
and asthma inhalers for GlaxoSmithKline. The third global business
focuses on packaging. “Procter and Gamble, for instance, is our
largest customer in packaging,” Lapres says.
Within these markets, Nypro forms strategic relationships with select customers. “We serve them very broadly and deeply, with
engineering services, global capabilities, design, tool building and
support, along with molding the plastic parts,” Lapres says.
Each unit largely runs itself, while Lapres and his corporate
team focus on the bigger picture. “How do we bring a parenting
advantage to these various businesses, driving synergies among them
so that there’s more value to being under the Nypro fold than not?”
he asks. “And then, what are the new markets that could drive our
growth in the future?” The sustainable energy market, for instance,
might offer significant opportunities, he says.
While making these changes, Nypro also had to move fast to
stay afloat during the global economic crisis. As money grew tight,
people started buying fewer wireless devices, home appliances, and
other products that are central to Nypro’s business. After 22 years
of straight increases, Nypro saw sales drop by about seven percent in
fiscal year 2008, compared with 2007.
In response, the firm cut expenses wherever it could. “As an
employee-owned company, we like to go carefully there,” Lapres
says. But the crisis forced Nypro to work harder than ever to control
costs and stimulate cash flow — with good results. “Even though we
ended up with profits down, we still remained profitable.”
The recession also made the company reassess the role of wireless
products in its portfolio. Wireless is a high-risk industry for a contract
manufacturer, since wireless products go obsolete every six to 12
months. As manufacturers prepare to introduce their next-generation
devices, Nypro must continually compete for their business.
“A health care program, if you win it, you might have for seven
to ten years,” Lapres says. Packaging programs last five to six years.
So Nypro has been working to balance its customer portfolio more
evenly among the three markets, he says.
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