Elmer L. Andersen - HB Fuller Company

HB Fuller Company

Andersen managed sales for the HB Fuller Company over the next seven years until, in 1941, he purchased a controlling interest in the company and took over as president. Under his leadership, the firm became an early model of corporate responsibility, recognized for offering generous benefits to employees, their spouses, and retirees. Andersen's corporate philosophy was built around four priorities in a definite order. The highest priority was service to the customer. "Anything the customer wanted should be seen as an opportunity for us to provide it. Number two was that the company should exist deliberately for the benefit of the people associated in it. I never liked the word employee. It intimated a difference in class within a plant. We always used the word associate. Fuller's third priority was to make money. To survive, you have to make money. To grow, you need money. To conduct research and develop new products, you must have money. The need for money can be desperate at times. But corporations must put the quest for money in its proper place. Our philosophy did not leave out service to the larger community. We put it in fourth place, behind service to customers, our associates, and the bottom line. Community service cannot be paramount to a business, but it ought not to be omitted, as it too often is. Business must concern itself with the larger society—for reasons of self-interest if nothing else."

Under Andersen's guidance, Fuller grew from a small St. Paul plant to an international Fortune 500 company. Fuller's expansion strategy kept the competition baffled. Competitors thought the company was struggling to keep all the new plants afloat, but the opposite was true. Other leaders in the adhesives industry operated in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. "They had huge plants and big established investments. They could not start a new plant. What would they do with their big old plant? By comparison, we were popping around the country and setting up small plants in lively little markets. We kept our real estate costs down. We did not have large freight charges to pass on to the customer. National Adhesives, the biggest company in the industry, was very focused on making money. They maintained their prices at a high level, even when their share of the market dropped, in order to make more money. That was a blessing for little companies like Fuller."

In 1968, Fuller became a publicly traded company. By 1970 Fuller had become an adhesives industry leader, with twenty-seven plants and offices in the United States and ten in foreign countries. The goal Andersen had set decades before of doubling their sales volume every five years was still being met. In 1970, Fuller reached about $48 million in sales.

Andersen retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of Fuller in 1974, at the age of 65, turning the company over to his eldest son, Tony.