028 INTERVIEW
“Arturo was charming, correct, diplomatic, the absolute opposite
of me. He is a great man and it was meeting him that convinced me - without him I wouldn’t have done it.”
Two decades may have passed (including the 10 years ‘non-compete’ agreement which accompanied his exit from Martin Pro in 1998 and led to him leaving the industry). But with many of his former R&D and sales personnel back in the fold, you wouldn’t bet against him riding the crest of a new wave. Peter Johansen’s success was founded on his maverick approach - the ability to create enormous production capacity in the north of the Denmark - and then cascading the output to the four corners of the globe. Starting with the Roboscan family and evolving through to the MAC 600, he flooded his distribution network, racking up sales figures that his competitors could only dream about. The fact that Peter Johansen never played by any of the rules was his enduring charm. But after Martin Pro floated on the Danish Stock Exchange there were suddenly rules aplenty, and his autocratic approach became subsumed in a world of suits, needing to create shareholder value and abide by guidelines which had little place for his business ethic. However, after being ousted from the company in 1998, he wasn’t exactly cast into the wilderness, as success followed on success, whether it was inventing the industry standard product for sterilising dental handpieces, becoming the biggest manufacturer of wind turbine blade moulds or indulging in his first love, building luxury yachts. “I never had any intention of returning to the lighting industry,” he stated vehemently. In this interview mondo*dr found out what made him change his mind and how he has taken up the challenge of reviving the Italian lighting brand SGM for Arturo Vicari’s RCF Group. In early 2010, SGM’s Commercial Director Giorgio Radice - knowing that Peter Johansen’s non-compete contract had now expired - set out to snare his quarry by luring the Dane back into the lighting industry. As the previous Italian distributors for Martin Professional, Giorgio and his father Mario had developed a close and enduring relationship. “Giorgio called me and asked if he could convince me to come back to lighting and I said: ‘No way’,” Peter recalled. “But he kept persisting and eventually I agreed to meet with Arturo [Vicari, Chairman of the RCF Group] and that convinced me. “Arturo was charming, correct, diplomatic, the absolute opposite of me. He is a great man and it was meeting him that convinced me - without him I wouldn’t have done it.” Such was the trust and mutual respect that the agreement was sealed on
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a handshake. However, Peter did lay down some conditions: “I said I would only do it if the [former] Martin R&D guys were with me. I then asked them: ‘Are you ready to do it again?’ They were hooked on the idea immediately.” With brilliant inventors like Finn Kallestrup and Christian Krause forming part of the so-called ‘dream team’, the new R&D facility was set up in Århus. Peter, meanwhile, was spending half his time in Thailand, living close to Pattaya Beach where he was running the Martin Industrial Group (producing windmill blades and plugs for the wind turbine industry, as well as parts for luxury yachts). The parent lighting company may have been based in Italy but it was about to undergo a major overhaul that even it could not have imagined. The evolution is set to continue and by the beginning of 2012 SGM will have its own 2,000 sq metre dedicated assembly plant in Thailand. But the key question was whether Peter could once again deliver the same expectation that he had in the ‘90s. In a scene reminiscent of Kevin Costner’s Field Of Dreams, Peter set out to assiduously hunt down his old star players from a bygone era (albeit not in ghostly form). “They had all been working in other industries, wind turbines, the dental industry, one with a Chinese manufacturer.
RCF Group Chairman, Arturo Vicari at Peter’s official introductory press conference
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