Part 1
Konrad Meister, founder
Seventy years ago, Konrad Meister was ahead of his time. From the way he traveled to the way he interacted with customers, the founder of Meister Abrasives approached his business with a mindset that fits right in with today’s focus on customer-centered operations in manufacturing technology.
When he established his one-person company on September 12, 1951, he initially intended only to import grinding wheels from Germany and sell them in Switzerland. A bicycle became his principal mode of transportation, pedaling to the train station and biking to a customer’s location at his destination. After a few years of success, he replaced the bicycle with a VW Beetle, increasing his travel speed and the reach of his growing company.
Five years after he went into business, Meister built his first physical office location in a small residence. He wanted to expand his customer base in Switzerland and beyond, but he knew that his plans would depend on developing his own products, not just selling others’ grinding wheels. His understanding of the grinding industry – and the challenges his customers faced – gave him a strong foundation of technical knowledge, but he was a businessperson with great ideas, not a research and development specialist or production manager.
the first office of Meister Abrasives
To supplement his business acumen and industry awareness, Meister hired an engineer from Germany in 1961 and began to build up a Swiss production unit. His focus: design and produce products of the highest Swiss quality for worldwide distribution. And distribution was Konrad Meister’s specialty. At a time when international businesses relied on mail, telegrams, telexes and propeller aircraft to communicate directly with customers, Meister personally traveled the world, sometimes staying for weeks at a time throughout Europe, the U.S. and Brazil.
His secret weapon as the founder of a newly global business was his gift for languages, which enabled him to communicate easily in German, Swiss German, Spanish, French, English, Italian and Finnish – the latter thanks to his wife, a native of Finland – along with a little Russian and Chinese, Greek and Portuguese. Wherever he traveled for business, he spoke the language and built personal bonds that gave him an exceptional advantage and helped him grow the company at a rapid pace. In negotiations, he switched among languages to respond to all parties in their native tongues. And each Christmas, he wrote every customer a personal letter, all as part of his effort to ensure their trust in his ability to understand their challenges.
To cement his business relationships, Meister strongly believed that customers needed to see the leader of the company, deal with him in person and know that he was committed to helping solve their problems. His talent for choosing the right markets to enter allowed him to deliver solutions that competitors could not match. For example, he envisioned the advantages of vitrified superabrasive wheels, which the company was the first in the Western world to develop. This led Meister to switch from 100% conventional wheels to today’s mix of 80% superabrasive vitrified products and a remaining part of highly specialized Ceralox products. That vision laid the foundation for the following two decades of the company’s focus.
Meister Abrasives began with an entrepreneur’s vision and gradually transformed into a family company. After Konrad Meister stepped back from day-to-day involvement in 2003, his three children took over the business. Although the family sold its majority share several years ago, that ownership passed to the management and another family office, retaining the focus on valuing all employees as individuals and encouraging the development of a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of its customer base.
To this day, Meister Abrasives continues to live by Konrad Meister’s principles. Rather than try to compete in crowded markets, Meister delivers high-quality abrasive solutions to customers with exceptional needs for automated, unattended 24/7 grinding precision. Meister also strives to stay at the forefront of technology, develop new technologies on its own that solve customers’ problems and treat those customers as an integral part of the process of identifying new needs to meet.
