Building materials manufacturers run a complex business. But we are here to help you plan for the future, whether you are launching a new product, rebuilding a brand, trying to get thoughtful communication strategies in place or everything in between here on constructing brands, we will be talking with leading experts in construction, architecture, engineering, marketing, and manufacturing to help make your building materials company stronger and more profitable with 15 plus years of experience.
Helping building materials companies succeed and grow your host, Eric Linnell.
Good morning and welcome to constructing brands. I’m so happy today to have Alexander Dornbrock the managing director. Thank you for coming on constructing brands. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. I’m glad I got to be joining and excited to have a chat today. Absolutely. Before we get started, I’m going to throw three fun facts at you and you tell me if people who do these things.
Fun fact research had it right. Okay. Fun fact one I’ve got for us about you and Kallista is luxury brand known for high end plumbing fixtures, faucets. One of the big ways that Kallista does it different is the design philosophy, which is teams travel globally to get inspired and find the most interesting high end solutions.
Fashion forward, correct? Correct. Okay. Fun fact too. So this is, speaks to luxury collection that you collaborate with renowned architects. That’s one of the ways in which Kallista really tries to differentiate. Secondarily, I think it’s interesting that you’re fourth generation in the ultra high end space, which I do want to get into.
So also correct. Yeah, we have to unpack that. Exactly. That’s more than just a and then the fun fact three for those who don’t know, and if they don’t know, they probably haven’t been, they’ve been under rock. Probably Kallista is part of the Kohler family. Also correct. Yeah. And it’s been so for many decades.
Yes. Yes. So those are my fun facts. Jumping right out of the fun facts. My first question is Kohler. Let’s just start with Kohler as a corporate. Entity they’ve had acquisitions. Can you tell me the story of Kallista and how it fits in with the Kohler brand and how that whole the Kallista brand, why it’s a strong sister to the other products within the Kohler family.
Yeah, absolutely. So Kallista was founded in the late seventies by two European immigrants, two people from the UK out of San Francisco with a philosophy to bring something different to the market. So Kallista actually very early on in his
journey, started sourcing global products, working with global materiality and that they did it in the seventies.
So they’re actually quite advanced and very forward looking to what they brought to the markets and to that brand specifically. Mr. Kohler, David Kohler’s father, Herbert Kohler, acquired the company in the eighties. Mid eighties, actually already fully incorporated in 1986. So Kohler has owned it for quite some time and he always had the vision that Kohler needed a secondary ultra luxury brand with specialized manufacturing processes very high end designs, different go to market strategy and philosophy inside the portfolio inside the house of brand of Kohler.
And Kallista was tiny back then. They’re a very small company even had its own production facility out of California. Yeah. And grew through Kohler and with Kohler over the past couple of decades with the goal, ultimate goal to be that shining star, that beacon on the ultra luxury side and to always have an answer.
For a broader section of the marketplace, if you think about portfolio strategies, you’re trying to obviously cover multiple, if not all segments of any given market you’re going into. And the Kohler brand today has even done luxury projects. The Kohler brand has stretched very far over its history. We celebrated 150 years.
Recently as a company, 40, 000 plus employees. So it’s a large global machine. Very successful brand that the biggest and largest brand by far in our industry. Still family owned obviously. And yeah, that journey I think has been phenomenal for both brands really over the last couple of decades.
And the Cola brand, like I said, stretches very far, many different regions, segments, categories, and. Kallista, our mission within that portfolio continues to stay the ultra luxury, high end luxury segments. That’s where we’re good at. That’s where we provide value to the larger company. And that’s very much our mission moving forward.
So in the world of good, better, best Kallista is best. and it’s retained that position in the portfolio. It has every portfolio has what we call entry level segments and products you do need those to stay competitive specifically when it comes to the project business in the industry even five or six star hotels it often comes down to a price discussion beyond design.
Right and any company wants to be globally successful has to have at least a certain amount of your portfolio sit more in that entry level lock space, but that’s not our core business. That’s not our core focus. Our core focus is really what we call the mid locks to the grand lock segment. Very much residentially driven.
We’re residential driven company. We work with residential designers. Our product designs have a residential philosophy. And we go off the residential trends around the globe and position the brand appropriately. So how much do you lend from brothers and sisters within the Kohler company? And how integrated is the company within your specific brand?
So we’re actually quite integrated in the back end. Any company that is owned by Kohler today obviously has IT back end system, economies of scale finance systems, I think your entire back end of the business, which is a good thing for a small business to tap into your culture, your entire culture and HR philosophy is coming down from Kohler, which is a great thing, right?
Kohler is family owned, privately owned. One thing I always talk about is we probably have one of the best performance and talent management philosophies that I’ve ever seen. Not just in our industry. I’ve worked across many different industries in my career. And that’s very much, I think that family driven mentality that you’re trying to have people work for you for a very long time.
So what makes it best? What is it that is that, that’s a big statement. So what is it? On an annual basis, we go through talent card and talent management with all associates, and we’re making sure that top talent and talent that’s performing very highly or even overperforming can move to the next steps.
Quickly at the right time. We would never hold a talent up because certain positions are filled or certain positions have been filled for a very long time. So it’s a very disciplined approach to make sure that talent keeps moving. Talent is going to be highlighted. Talent is going to be talked about.
Talent gets opportunities to, to get additional education in stuff from programs inside the company or outside the company. It’s a very robust program, how yeah, human being and talent is being looked at as really an investment for the future. One that I think not all of companies outside of a family driven mentality can give to their teams.
What are the specific things that help drive that ability to evaluate, hear what people are thinking and identify talent and help talent move forward? I think on
the one side, it’s a very distinct performance culture. So I think goals have to be set.
Goals have to be very clear, but on the other side, you also have to make sure that you as a leader, myself as a leader, you do everything you can to enable your team to be successful. That’s part of what our leadership mindset, a leader is not responsible as to dictate strategies and visions down is also responsible to bottom up, work for the people and make sure they’re going to have everything that they need to deliver the results that you want to see.
And we do performance reviews on an annual basis, and the performance reviews are not just tied to your. Individual role or department. We also let cultural belief systems flow into that. All the way top down to every employee globally, right? Kohler has five five specific value systems, right? One of them, for example, is boldly innovate.
And we grade people based on those sections. So it becomes a mixture of here’s the culture belief system that our company offers, and here is specific performance goals and targets for your role in your department. I’m going to ask you the five now, right? Yes, it’s about innovation. It’s about an ownership mentality.
It’s about a customer mindset. It’s about delivering excellent service and service quality. It is about what was that for that was innovation, ownership, customer delight peer relationships and peer mentoring. And I think how you work with your fellow team members. Can you inspire?
Can you inspire beyond your role? So the Kohler corporate has developed a brand ethos, a vision, mission, value statement that permeates through every one of the companies with which they acquire to make sure that there’s a consistent, and then it sounds like the back end, it’s all about About owning the the backbone foundations, efficiencies of the backend exactly.
Complete efficiency, which is like a no-brainer. And on top of that, for Kallista, you have supply chain integration, Kallista Kohl, and I know, so you’re involved specifically with strategic Vision and planning product development, innovation, supply chain management. Those are, those fit within your responsibilities at Kallista.
So yeah, all of it we really treat it like a separate, it’s a separate business as a separate brand. It is back end integrated into Kohler company. And what makes
Kallista different than one of our sister brands, Ann Sacks, for example, we additionally, Ann Sacks does tile, we have the supply chain integration.
For brassware, as we’re producing the same category of product as Kohler does in most of the categories, it makes sense to leverage some of those supply chain efficiencies. It makes sense to have your PVD finish process and quality and target base very much aligned to the parent. Rather than two companies being out on their own, trying to develop different PVD finish methodology.
How you’re sourcing, are you doing that independently or are you doing that collectively with other peers?
So the front end is completely independent, right? We own our own product roadmap, our design philosophy, our targets, our prioritization on the backend side, when it comes to supply qualifications, there’s synergies and you are aligned. So Kallista has to work across. Many peer groups within Kohler that are category managers of faucets, category managers of showers, category managers of fixtures to then also be aligned in, in, in a prioritization within the supplier can only handle X amount of requests and X amount of new projects.
So you find that alignment there, but the front end has to stay independent. So to make sure the brands. It’s going to drive its own destiny that’s amazing and it makes sense a company as successful as Kohler you would imagine that they’ve thought through how to how to leverage i think that’s the best word to use leverage the wherewithal of the company.
Yeah the greater good while keeping some independence and it sounds like that’s exactly you could be a creatively unique but leverage the wherewithal of the larger entity. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that’s the sweet spot. I think we’re in today. Probably the the best spot we’ve ever been in in terms of back end support and ability to use our parent company and structures to scale, even if you think about globalization and other topics as well.
For the Kallista brand, but being nimble enough and having your own teams with your own vision that, that really feel that connection to the brand and to the business. When it comes to product design, marketing, communication. I think that was a really important step that I’ve worked on very hard over the last three years to get to that perfect sweet spot.
That can now really enable scalable growth for the business. Makes perfect sense. I’m going to take a step back. Your name is synonymous with
manufacturing quality. High quality upscale. Yeah. Yeah, your family is yours. Fourth generation.
So if you could share with us your family’s business, what is it exactly? And how have you danced in and out of that? And where are you at with it now? How does this work? Yeah, that’s super DD elephant in the room type conversation that still is today, even after almost three and a half years at Kohler at Kallista for me.
Yeah. So my family, my great grandfather started a business called Dornbracht, which happens to be the same as my last name right after world war two, when the markets opened back up and Over four generations built the business domestically, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and then my father really took the business to a global scale and I think was one of the pioneers of bringing design into the bathroom design to faucetry design to brassware specifically in the seventies, eighties and nineties.
My commanding 1, 500, 2, 000 for a faucet that was unheard of reaching those price points and justifying that through design and brand value and cachet and yeah, build it. I would say arguably, not arguably the most successful luxury brand in the world in the industry. That since I think still today stands on its own at the top German heritage, German made, which still carries very big way to in today’s global world successful in I believe we got to about to 9, 100 countries.
With distribution and market share and being really at the top of the game for most specs in residential spaces, all over the globe, as well as project and commercial spaces. Fast forward to 2020, actually, let me take a step back. I actually didn’t join the business in the industry to 2018.
Okay. I left Europe. I left Germany right off the college. Couldn’t see myself. I was always drawn to the U S I couldn’t see myself in Europe. Long term there was something about the U S that, that really sparked me as it does, I think for millions of people on the globe, I traveled the U S extensively as a kid with my parents specifically California.
So my dream in my early twenties was to to live in Southern California, made that happen. And really. Started becoming an adult and built my career in the U S right in my early twenties. So I had a variety of different jobs, went to grad school in California, which was a phenomenal experience and didn’t really join the industry in the business till 2018.
Ultimately ended up leaving San Diego and moving to Atlanta, Dornbach. America’s was managed out of Atlanta since the early eighties, one of the first German companies moving into Georgia and actually taking advantage of something very smart, the Georgian governor’s did back then they gave incentives for European companies.
Open the headquarters in georgia and pay to their tax revenue in georgia fast forward you have portion of america mercedes north america many biotech and biofirm companies out of georgia there are a lot of europe. And headquartered here so there was a good good place i think to start building the business.
So I moved over in 2018, managed the North American market for about three years. And later in 2021, the family decided to do an exit. So we ultimately sold the business in 2020 which came with an exit as well as an exit contract for myself, which was, uh, quite a big curve ball, right?
I was only 30, 34 at the time. Okay. And you’re like the vice president of right. You North America. Yeah. I essentially ran the North American operations,
it’s 2020. Were you part of the decision to sell the company? Or was it, did you have a vote and there were 10 votes? Did you, how did that work out? So the family ultimately reached an agreement to make that move for the greater good, I think, of the future. You had two families involved that were still with shared ownership in the business, which sometimes it’s not easy to manage.
I think anybody that works in a family business or with families knows that. Yeah. That wasn’t ultimately an aligned decision. So I decided to take that line decision after planning my future in the business and industry, and then figure out what do I do next? Life throws you those curve balls. You have to figure out how you’re going to hit them. Yeah. And to me, it was about still leaving my mark in the industry, an industry that I started to love and have a lot of passion for.
And as I looked around, obviously you can’t ever imagine going to a lot of competition or competitors, right? That’s usually a big no go. I think with Kohler and Kohler being a family that we’ve known for half a century. There was always been mutual respect between the two families that the, I think two families that have built great legacies, great products, great brands for them to have this gem, this precious luxury brand that has been successful, but has not seen this full potential yet.
I reached out practically. I just asked the question whether we could have a conversation. And here we are three and a half years later and taking Kallista now to Salone and expanding globally. So that’s life, I guess it’s funny that way. So you have, how does that work? So now there’s that family dynamic and we, and there’s an exit strategy and you find the suitor and you’re going through that that sell process.
And you’re deciding, you know what? I really like this business. I have, I you’ve been doing it now for two or three years, three years, and you’re in Atlanta and you’re like I’m good at this. I like this. And I understand that there’s an exit strategy here, but I understand. Upscale I understand brand.
I understand all those pieces that go into driving this. So you took it upon yourself to reach out to Kohler. Yeah, I’m a big believer that you got to forge your own destiny. Yeah destiny won’t just hand you something. You got to find your built your own door and open it and go through it. And it worked out and it was a good thing because at the same time, I think there was some discussions, what’s next for Kallista internally.
Hey these moments, that’s funny how destiny sometimes works, right? Yeah, for sure. If you don’t reach out and push you, you’ll never know. It’s probably one of the big lessons I’ll take from this. Don’t wait for the unknown to find what the unknown is and just make it happen. Amazing.
And you really knew what you were getting into and they knew what they were getting from you too, because if you’re, yeah, what a great marriage, yeah, great marriage. Like I said, fantastic company. I think one thing important for me was that family dynamics still. Yeah. The fact that you have a family involved that cares always about the long term value of what you do, what your brands are doing, what your business is doing, we’re not chasing three months profits.
To report into wall street, we’re looking to build long term value for the business for the family and for all four employees. And I think that’s what makes a family owned business special. And yeah I’m biased, but I think that’s a good thing, right? Joining from one family was to another. It’s just very familiar.
Is it weird now working for another family? With your history? No. And I think I’ve had it a little bit easier with a transition because I’ve only experienced my own family business with my own last name on the door for three years, I’ve worked in other companies in the U S that are very cutthroat, as And in corporate America and made it there and have promotions and had success.
So I’ve worked with other people with CEOs that in other industries that could have care less what my last name means. They actually didn’t know what my last name means in this industry. And I’ve made it there. So I think that’s given me a good. Baseline foundation of how to find success, how to work through that.
And then within Kohler it just also taught me a lot. I’m growing significantly through a company like Kohler with the processes, the discipline management tactics and strategies and visions and ideas. So it’s been a great step to also keep my own career. You come across as being very disciplined, probably the mise en place, right?
The German. There’s a little bit of that. Yeah. I would say at this point after 15 years in the U S I would say I’m really half, half, half American, half German. Hopefully taking the good out of both cultures and their mindsets. So that’s so how interesting. So that transition happens.
You’re here now. So tell me about the future. I’m just going to ask you one last question and it is. If you’re looking, where are you in five years from now and where do you see the industry and how do you see guiding it Kallista or wherever you envision yourself or however you see yourself, how do you see it?
Give me that future look. Yeah, it’s funny because. That’s very clearly in my mind. My brain works that I can have anchors in the future of how I see certain things happening at what we’re trying to accomplish. I think five years from now, Kallista will be. A globally recognized design leader in the luxury plumbing, kitchen, and bathroom space with as an American company drive an American design philosophy around the globe, which is going to be very unique that has not been done before, or has done it in their market segments very successfully.
They run a very large business in China and in many other countries on that niche and that niche luxury segment. It has not been done before that an American design driven company It’s been recognized in London, in Munich, in Singapore, in Mexico city. And I think that’s the path we’re on right now.
So Lona this year was the very first credibility check to see our global designers clicking with our brand, clicking with our designs. Do they find inspiration? Do they latch onto, to the journey that we’re on? And I think that’s where the Kallista brand will be five years from now. I’m going to be, I’m going to be involved in that and leading that five years from now.
I think there’s other opportunities for me within inside Kohler as well. I think to take different roles, larger roles Kohler has large ambition. Kohler’s working on a lot of new categories, right? To grow market share and then grow business and ultimately push the industry forward through its own innovation on innovation machine.
So I think five years from now I do want to have that Kallista success journey, though stamped to my name. And that’s very much one, one big thing I’m focused on. How big a part of it will be the collabs that you’re doing with architects, designers, how big a part of it will be utilizing Technology, AI, emerging technology.
How, what are the, if you’re looking at ingredients that make it happen, what do they look like to you? So we have a very defined strategy around that. We have a very strong internal design team that we’ve built over the last three years that I’m very proud of. Two of the three new collections that we have coming out are internally designed.
Okay. I think that was one of my first goals is going to be important to have an internal POV. If your brand just consists of outside designers, your portfolio becomes a wide variety of point of views. It’s hard to dial that in as a brand. If you don’t have that muscle internally. So that’s one thing.
So you have that distinctive point of view and external design teams, industrial design partners, like a Laura Carr that we have today, workshop, APD, Rams out of New York, very successful firms. To bring new and fresh ideas to the portfolio. I do believe that mix is important though, because if your brand just consists of outside designers.
You you can have a distinct POE Makes sense. Makes. So I think that mix will absolutely be important. And one thing I always talk about to be successful in the future over the next five years will be operational strength for a business, our industry. There, there’s a lot of design out there.
There’s a lot of good design that comes out in the world of ai. There’s designs in the world of AI that now get. Mass marketed through social media and you reach and push hundreds of thousands of millions of people to get that out there, I think what separates the real luxury brands from the trendy luxury brands that are all out there in every industry nowadays is substance.
It’s operational strength is heritage. It’s the ability that when you have local distribution and all the markets you’re available that you have a human being
pick up the phone to help you with the issues. I’m very much on board. I think with the opportunities that AI is going to bring, we’re going to be very cautious on that.
I’m not a big believer that’s a train that everybody in every process needs to jump on day one. I think human beings are still very important in the equation, right? We, what we say internally is we’re humans designing for other humans. I don’t need and don’t want a machine in that process yet.
I take great pride that when you call Kallista today, within 12 seconds, we pick up the phone. There’s a human being on the other side. It’s not a chatbot, it’s not an AI tool, it’s not a form you fill out. You can talk to a human. But you are using text. But you’re using technology to accomplish the 12 second and you’re evaluating based on other technology that probably is benchmarking it.
Yeah, we are correct. But I think that touch is still very much important point. Taken one of our brand pillars. Yeah. One of our brand posts, we define as community. So we want to have people that represent our brands, be close to the customers and be close to the architect and design community at all of our touch points.
So when you’re looking at how you’re presenting your brand to architects, designers, when you’re thinking about your new, a new collection what is, what’s a typical rollout strategy for you? Is it trade shows? How important is that? Is it? Touchy feel like literally going, doing a road show.
Is it, what is in your mind the right way to present a new portfolio?
So I still believe that the physical interaction with the products, specifically plumbing and brassware is still very important. Everything looks good on Instagram. Until you get close to it and you see actually the fine machine detail and how the handle actually turns once you play with it, I think that’s the fine difference in luxury.
So in our industry, it’s still very common to launch a trade shows. We do the same thing, whether it be use the cavies in Las Vegas or Salone in Italy ICFF in New York or other relevant trade shows throughout the country to achieve that. That’s always step one. You want to launch your product physically in person to connect with the community your step two is then enhancing that launch digitally.
Through all the social media channels, online and offline media, the right partnerships that we, for example, have with Lux magazine, where we go out and we have the right advertising package behind it to then start reaching as many people as possible. The third step is, which I believe in is a big one as we go typically on smaller roadshows.
Where we bring the product in a very aesthetically pleasing, very high ends way to smaller designer events across the country, same thing, our philosophy, connecting with people. I don’t need to necessarily talk to a thousand designers at the same time in New York, I want to talk to the 15 to 20.
They make a difference and invite them to an event, have a conversation, get the right feedback, get them excited. And really that back and forth and community building is this one thing we’re focused on. What, when you say invite them to an event, is there an event that comes to mind that you’ve created over the last couple of years that you thought was exceptional to highlight and showcase your products to a handful of people?
Yeah, for example, we launched our one collection in in partnership with P. E. Guerin manufacturing company for brassware, customized brassware out of New York, still fully manufactured in New York. We did a custom handle upgrade with them, a beautiful hand hammered, brass hand hammered handle for one collection created by human beings, one off production not at any machine, it’s hand hammered.
And we took a certain amount of designers to the P.E. Guerin workshop, showing them how we actually hand producing these handles. Later on, we had a dinner event and celebrating the success of that collection over, over cocktails, over good food and good conversation. And I think that to me is very much how a brand engages in a community.
And right. Our job is to also help inspire and find new inspiration for the design community, bring something new to the table, and you have to do that in person. And you have to do that through yeah, just good conversations and good feedback processes. I love it. Manufacturing so sexy.
If you actually take the curtain down and show people really the time, energy, and effort that goes into. Making a high quality anything handle, and so to be able to get someone engaged and show them yard and the artist in the the the beauty, the time, the energy that goes into it, I think is awesome.
And it sounds like that’s you’re harnessing the power of that, which is so cool. And it’s important to preserve that for the future. I cannot see a future where suddenly a lot of the stuff we’re used to gets 3d printed. I can, I believe an opportunity for luxury brands is to continue to do it.
Differently sustainability responsible, but still differently, right? That attention to detail that custom one off procedure, right? Artisans families out of Italy, Northern Italy, that we do some custom handles with, for example, they’ve been doing this for 200 years. They should not be replaced by a 3d print robot.
We need to keep that alive. Because if robots suddenly do all that at some point and humans are not involved at all anymore in the process, I think we’re going to have a problem of how did we differentiate products? Yes, sometimes the beauty is in the unique differences of the pieces as opposed to the exact, I.
I drive a Porsche because first gear isn’t always in the same spot, a manual Porsche. That’s good. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. I’ll tell you, Alexander, thank you so much for being a part of constructing brands. I appreciate your time and energy and everything you had to say here. It was great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. Great conversation. And yeah, good luck with your continued success with the podcast.
Thank you, sir.
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