Quest for the game changer
By Joe Boomgaard | LabWork
jboomgaard@mibiz.com
ADA — Contrary to the old axiom, Catherine R. Ehrenberger found that you can come home again to the Midwest even if you are a researcher for consumer products companies.
Ehrenberger, VP of research and development and quality assurance for direct seller Amway Corp., worked most of her career in consumer products, but never really considered a company like Amway. But after an in-person visit and realizing what the company had to offer, she saw an opportunity to come back home to the Midwest.
“When I came to Amway, and what surprises everyone, is the breadth and depth of scientific community here and the number of disciplines,” Ehrenberger said. “Everything from chemistry to microbiology, genetics, and mechanical engineers — the breadth of the science community here is really impressive. We’re doing really leading edge work in skin care and nutrition.”
She came to Amway from Ciba Specialty Chemicals U.S. Corp., where she led the company’s global home and personal care business lines and served as VP of the company’s specialty chemicals division, splitting her time between Basel, Switzerland and High Point, N.C. Prior to Ciba, Ehrenberger was director of the cosmetic and pharmaceutical division at BASF Corp.
While Amway has a strong reputation for skin care products overseas, the company struggles in the North American market — Amway’s home turf — because the company hasn’t sought exposure here until recently, she said. What drew her to the $8.2 billion private company was that science took center stage in Amway’s plans to become more of a player in the global skin care market. As the population shifts to becoming more aged, consumers will continue to demand more of a focus on mitigating the aging process through consumer products.
“Amway has invested significantly in people with capabilities and leading edge equipment,” she said. “What I can bring is better ways to partner with suppliers and leverage what we do.”
Ehrenberger’s career has been involved in many aspects of the business. She started off as a chemist and then got involved in the business development side. “I walked in a lot of people’s shoes,” she said.
While the science can be there for a product, what really drives a company forward is sales. If a product won’t sell, then it doesn’t matter how great the science is. Ehrenberger said she uses her mom as a benchmark for sales — “Would my mom want to use that product?” Perhaps the most important piece of that puzzle is communication.
“We take a scientific concept and communicate it in a way my mom can understand,” she said. “We do need very strong analytical minds that go very deep, but we have to emerge from that (science) and communicate it. The team will come with a cool concept — that’s leading edge in terms of science — but if it takes a 10-page (paper) to describe it, it will never work. We have to explain what the advantage of invention is concisely and in layman’s terms.”
While Amway hopes to better penetrate the North American skin care market, it’s also working on nutritional products, especially through its Nutrilite brand. Ehrenberger’s also coordinating a team in China that’s investigating how to incorporate traditional Chinese medicine into Amway’s products.
“We want to help people lead healthier lives,” she said. “We’re all going to be living longer.”
While declining to comment on the products the company’s currently working on, Ehrenberger said Amway’s product pipeline is “significant.”
“We look to have at least two to three major products launched in big categories per year,” she said.
Those products, most often, are based on the work done by researchers in her department.
“Our company was always committed to science. It has plans for double-digit growth — and to do that we need to have the products to continue to do that,” she said. “We can’t do that on small products. We need to have game changers (and my team) needs to provide them with those game changer products.” LW
