Posted May. 5, 2008
This is the 11th in a series of 12 PBN articles focusing on the backgrounds, challenges and successes of some of the area’s most influential and interesting business women. The series began Sept. 12.
Cheryl Merchant, president and CEO of Hope Global in Cumberland, has overcome many obstacles in her life.
Twenty-five years ago, when she was 20 years old, she was the only woman – and the only white person – working second shift at General Motors Corp. in the gritty heart of Detroit, where she was a supervisor at the Cadillac paint shop.
In later years, she would work for Mazda, for Ford Motor Co. and, when the Ford plants were sold in the early 1990s, for the Fortune 500 company that acquired them, the Lear Corp. based in Southfield, Mich. At every place, she was a supervisor, in charge of hundreds of employees making automobile parts, usually working on specialty pieces for interiors such as seat belts or seat covers.
She has been posted to Mexico and Canada. She’s supervised manufacturing plants in England, Poland, Germany and throughout Europe. She helped Lear take $20 million off the cost of producing car interiors through value-added value-engineered (VA/VE) techniques that included new materials and better operations.
But the greatest challenge the 45-year-old Merchant ever faced came in October of 2005 right here in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
Out of nowhere, a brutal rainstorm in the middle of the month worsened what was already a nasty, wet October. Some 12.27 inches of water fell in the Blackstone Valley during the first two weeks of the month, with more than 4 inches falling on just one day, Oct. 15. On that day, the river rose 15 feet above its usual level, flowing at a powerful pace, six times the normal rate. Nearby homes and businesses were evacuated. It was the worst rainstorm in the valley in 100 years.
At Hope Global, located right next to the river, 5 feet of water surged through the low-lying factory, ruining sophisticated equipment, washing away offices, furniture and files, causing what was then estimated at $5 million in damages. The company, with more than 300 employees and a 122-year history of textile manufacturing, was devastated.
At that time, Merchant had been in charge of Hope Global for five years. Born and raised in the middle of Michigan, where her parents owned a farm, she had graduated in three-and-a-half years from Alma College, a small private liberal-arts school in Alma, Mich. Her mother convinced her to attend a GM national hiring conference, where 1,300 people were looking for jobs, and she became one of 12 hired out of 115 interviewed for the Cadillac plant in Detroit.
She spent two years at GM, then three years working as the only female supervisor at Mazda and then went to Ford, where she was sent to Mexico as quality director of the plant manufacturing seat covers for all 54 Ford factories.
In the early 1990s, Lear Corp. acquired Ford, so Merchant ended up working for Lear, one of the few female managers with an extensive background in manufacturing. She started as one of 10 supervisors, overseeing 3,500 employees who made 20,000 vehicles a year. She spent five years at Lear, working in Canada to oversee the manufacture of seat belts for Crown Victoria and Grand Marquis models, and later as plant manager supervising the merger and consolidation of Lear facilities throughout Europe. “I’m the only woman you’ll meet who can live out of a carry-on for three weeks,” she says, “because I hate lost luggage.”
Back in the United States in the late 1990s, she concentrated on VA/VE engineering projects for Lear. One of Lear’s suppliers happened to be a relatively small manufacturing operation known as the Hope Webbing Co. in Cumberland, founded in 1883.
The late David Casty, former president and CEO, had bought the company in 1957. In her dealings with Casty, Merchant was forthright, frank and candid – that’s her style – about how the products and processes at Hope could be improved. But they impressed Casty, who offered her a job she took at Hope in October of 1999. “The plan was for me to run the company,” she says, and a year later, that’s exactly what she was doing.
At that time, in spite of its name, Hope Webbing made no webbing. So, Merchant and her team of managers took several days to conduct an intensive, thorough analysis of the firm and its future prospects. They came up with a new name to go with a modern international image: Hope Global, Engineered Textile Solutions. The company today has four manufacturing divisions: braiding, weaving, assembly and wire.
Since Merchant took over, Hope Global has more than doubled in size, adding plants in Detroit, Brazil and Ireland to those already operating in France, Mexico and Rhode Island. Although plans are in the works to close the French factory, Merchant revealed that Hope Global is in the process of opening a new facility in the Czech Republic. The company has 800 employees worldwide, with 375 at the Cumberland site.
But all work on Martin Street came to a halt on that dismal day in October of 2005 when, Merchant recalls, “this whole place was under water. Everything was gone.” When the water eventually receded, Hope Global was filled with a black, gooey mess several feet thick, the smelly detritus of the Blackstone River. It took three days of around-the-clock efforts just to get a few machines running again, Merchant says.
Once the building was safe, employees wearing safety gloves, masks and boots helped to scrub the place clean, working 24/7 for many months.
During that time, Merchant says proudly, “we never lost a customer, we never missed a shipment. The flood strengthened us internally and strengthened our reputation in the marketplace because our customers know we will never let them down.” •
Read about other Business Women, in the rest of the PBN series, here.
Additional about Hope Global – a textile manufacturer founded in Pawtucket in 1883 as Hope Webbing, and now based in Cumberland – is available at www.hopeglobal.com.
