Meyer International Holdings, Ltd.

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Meyer International Holdings, Ltd.

DEBUT OF CIRCULON: 1984

ORIGINS

Meyer’s prominence in the cookware industry was the work of Stanley K. Cheng, who changed the orientation of his family’s business to create something more profound than a so-called category killer. Cheng created a category, carving out a new niche in the cookware market, and then, after defining it, went on to dominate it. He was born in Hong Kong in 1948, one of six children in a family that drew its income from manufacturing metal products and a host of other business ventures. The family business sprang from the Chiap Hua Group, a network of individual entities involved mainly in the production of metal products that was established in China in 1922. Cheng’s father, Cheng Chik Chi, joined the Chiap Hua Group in 1937, when he and three of his brothers set up the firm’s operations in Hong Kong. With the Hong Kong operations as a starting point, Cheng’s father and uncles built a bustling business empire that included a rolling mill, real estate and mortgage financing interests, iron and steel works, a ship salvaging operation, and numerous other ventures. Of particular importance to the future of the cookware industry was the family’s aluminum manufacturing plant, which produced flashlights, hinges, camping lanterns, and tennis rackets. The Anglicized name of the family business, a transliteration of the Chinese characters for “beautiful” and “Asia” (“mai” and “yah”), was Meyer Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

Cheng would take the Meyer name to new heights, but before he did so he moved overseas to finish his education. He attended the University of Oregon and Oregon State University during the mid-1960s, earning degrees in business administration and mechanical engineering. He returned to Hong Kong in 1971, ready to make wholesale changes in his family’s aluminum manufacturing business. He quickly changed the strategic direction of Meyer Manufacturing, directing company officials to make the switch to producing a line of cookware. The company’s first line of products, a private label line of inexpensive, 12-gauge aluminum cookware, made its market debut in London in 1972, but Cheng’s entry into the business did not bring immediate success. He ultimately wanted to market products under his own brand, and, more than anywhere else, he wanted to market his products in the United States. When he signed a five-year alliance with Ekco Products in 1977, he gained entry into the U.S. market for the first time, but marketing an aluminum-ware line under the Ekco name failed to meet his expectations. “That arrangement,” Cheng recalled in a May 28, 1984, interview with HFD-The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper, “never really worked out very well and we were happy to see the deal run out in 1981.” Cheng wanted to enter the U.S. market with his own product, one that embodied innovation and elevated the stature of the Meyer name. Within a few years of ending his company’s relationship with Ekco, Cheng’s dream came true.

Cheng established Meyer’s U.S. base of operations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the early 1980s, the starting point of his assault on the U.S. market. Initially, Cheng misfired. He introduced a line of high-end aluminum cookware, positioning Meyer for the first time in the more upscale segment of the market, but he encountered a host of competitors battling it out with price promotions that obscured Meyer’s product line. “We didn’t really have a focus,” a company executive, Jon C. Rieden, conceded in a December 17, 1990, interview with HFD-The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper. “We had kind of a shotgun approach.” Several new executives with experience in the U.S. market were recruited to help distinguish the company in the saturated market, but unquestionably the greatest contributor to Meyer’s success in the United States, and elsewhere, was the inventiveness of Cheng. Tapping into his skills as an engineer, Cheng developed what became Meyer’s seminal product, the Circulon line of cookware.

DEBUT OF CIRCULON: 1984

Introduced in 1984, Circulon represented a new category in the cookware market, the first line of nonstick, hard-anodized pans. The breakthrough product featured an aluminum core sandwiched between a hard-anodized exterior and a hard-anodized nonstick surface, enabling the use of Teflon at high temperatures. The pan’s interior, a titanium composite, featured a series of tiny peaks and valleys that Cheng patented as Meyer’s “Hi-Low” process. The small grooves reduced abrasion of the Teflon surface, which became the basis of the line’s marketing slogan, “Food Won’t Stick for 10 Years.” After more than a decade of applying its energies to the cookware segment, Meyer confirmed its position as preeminent manufacturer with the release of the Circulon line. The brand became an immediate commercial success, developing within a few short years into the most popular single line of cookware in the world. “Circulon gave us a unique product,” Rieden said in his December 17, 1990, interview with HFD-The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper. “We went from the shotgun to the rifle.”

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

We specialize in the distribution of metal cookware and other kitchen products. Our cookware is made by our own affiliate factories throughout the world, including Italy, Thailand, and China. We focus on developing high quality, top performing cookware, utilizing cutting edge technology and designs. We offer cookware made from stainless steel, hard-anodized aluminum, and nonstick aluminum. Offering different brands enables us to distribute different levels of cookware to tailor to specific cooking and lifestyle needs.

The Circulon line gave Meyer a cookware line to rally around, a brand that distinguished the company and attracted the attention of retailers. Gourmet specialty stores and department stores, in particular, inundated Meyer with orders for Circulon, excited that, for the first time, they could offer customers a nonstick, hard-anodized product. As sales mounted, Cheng quickly followed his success with Circulon by introducing the Anolon line in 1986, a dishwasher-safe, nonstick line of cookware made with a thicker gauge of aluminum than Circulon pans. Together, the two cookware lines formed the foundation of Meyer’s business, giving Cheng a base to build upon in the coming years.

Cheng, presiding as president and chief executive officer, expanded aggressively as he redefined the cookware market. Although success in the U.S. market had occupied his attention, he by no means limited his expansion efforts to courting American retailers. Cheng intended to make Meyer a global force. A network of Meyer subsidiaries were established to serve as marketing and distribution arms of Cheng’s expanding empire, each fed by manufacturing facilities in Hong Kong, Thailand, Italy, and China. In the early 1980s, Cheng established Meyer Group Limited in the northwest of England at roughly the same time he established U.S. headquarters in Milwaukee and formed a Canadian subsidiary, Meyer Canada Inc. Further expansion in the 1990s fleshed out Meyer’s geographic presence.

While his company spread its presence across the world map, Cheng was on the move as well. In 1992, he relocated his U.S. subsidiary, Meyer Corporation U.S., to Vallejo, California, and moved his family to the San Francisco Bay Area city. Cheng directed Meyer’s worldwide operations from his offices in Vallejo and began to express his entrepreneurial bent in endeavors aside from cookware. In 1996, he purchased a 127-acre ranch in Napa Valley and established a vineyard, Hestan Vineyards, that began producing wines bearing the Meyer name, among other labels. Despite making the foray into running a winery, Cheng did not let his attention stray from expanding his cookware business. In 1996, the same year he purchased his Napa Valley ranch, Cheng acquired the Raco cookware brand in Australia and used the acquisition to establish Meyer Cookware Australia Pty. Ltd., the Australian marketing arm of his operations. The following year he bolstered his U.K. operations by purchasing the Prestige brand of cookware, which had enjoyed nearly a half-century of recognition in the United Kingdom and nearby export markets.

With his own brands and those acquired from other manufacturers, Cheng maintained a formidable presence in the cookware segment. His position was strengthened further by adding a third mode of expansion. He began licensing brands from other companies, notably KitchenAid and Farberware, which enabled his U.S. subsidiary to become the largest distributor in the country and the second largest in the world. As Meyer pushed past its 30th anniversary in the cookware market, Cheng continued to seek new avenues of growth, ensuring that his company maintained its aggressive edge.

MEYER IN THE 21ST CENTURY

By the beginning of the 21st century, three decades of expansion put the Meyer corporate banner in nearly every corner of the world. At the heart of the sprawling empire was the company’s manufacturing facility in Thailand, which dwarfed its other production plants in Italy and China. Over the years, capital improvement programs at the Thailand facility increased its manufacturing space to more than one million square feet, a figure that did not include a 300,000-square-feet rolling mill, which enabled the company to manufacture more than 90 percent of the materials used to make its products. The Thailand facility produced an average of 100,000 pans per day, 300 days a year, providing sufficient volume to serve Meyer affiliates in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

KEY DATES

1951:: Meyer Manufacturing Co., Ltd., is founded in Hong Kong.
1971:: Stanley K. Cheng steers Meyer into the cookware business.
1984:: Meyer unveils its Circulon brand, the first line of hard-anodized, nonstick cookware.
1986:: Meyer introduces the Anolon brand of cookware.
1992:: Meyer moves its U.S.-based operations to California.
1996:: Marketing and distribution operations are established in Australia.
2006:: Meyer forms an alliance with celebrity chef Rachel Ray.

The demand for the more than 100 cookware lines either made by or represented by Meyer promised to grow as Cheng kept the Meyer name at the forefront of the cookware market. During the first years of the 21st century, Cheng struck two deals that strengthened the already stalwart position of his company. In 2004, he joined Copia, a Napa Valley-based culinary organization, and Purcell Murray, the largest U.S. distributor of high-end kitchen appliances, in becoming part of Gaspergoo, a family entertainment property. The Gaspergoo franchise, launched by a filmed entertainment and lifestyle brand company named Zoup-ah!, was expected to include a television and home video series, licensed consumer products, cooking schools, and a chain of themed restaurants. Meyer signed on to provide house-wares to the Gaspergoo franchise. In a September 2004 press release issued by Zoup-ah!, Cheng commented on the deal. “We are very excited to be working with Gaspergoo on the development of a comprehensive new line of quality houseware products for families,” he said. “We believe that the Gaspergoo brand of housewares will be a big success due to the rapidly rising family focus on nutrition and cooking, and based on several of Meyer’s groundbreaking design innovations.”

Cheng’s other notable partnership formed during the first half of the decade allied Meyer with a popular personality in U.S. culinary circles. In 2006, he reached an agreement with Rachel Ray, a celebrity chef, daytime talk-show host, and star of cable television’s Food Network. Under the terms of the agreement, Meyer was selected to be the exclusive distributor of Ray’s cookware collection, which included hard-anodized, nonstick pans, stockpots, sauté pans, and griddles.

Cheng’s accomplishments in the years leading up to Meyer’s 35th anniversary in the cookware market were indicative of a leader who eschewed complacency. In the years ahead, Cheng’s attention to opening up new business channels for Meyer promised to fuel the company’s steady rise, ensuring that the Meyer name would stand for excellence in cookware well into the future.

Jeffrey L. Covell

PRINCIPAL SUBSIDIARIES

Meyer Manufacturing Co. Ltd.; Meyer Corporation, U.S.; Meyer Guangzhou (China); Meyer Beijing (China); Meyer Zhaoqing Products Co. Ltd. (China); Nippon Meyer Co. Limited (Japan); Meyer Group Ltd. (U.K.); Meyer Prestige Limited (U.K.); Meyer Cookware Australia Pty. Ltd.; Meyer Canada Inc.; Meyer Europe SRL (Italy); Meyer Housewares Pte. Ltd.; Meyer (Thailand) Limited; Meyer Housewares (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.; Myrex International Ltd.