Far Afield

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Far Afield
Lyndon Faulkner

Lyndon Faulkner is a rare case: an L.A. chief executive who started life in a working-class Welsh village and played professional rugby while studying engineering. A knee injury at 24 forced him into a job as an engineer at Wales-based CD and DVD manufacturer Nimbus CD International Inc., where he rose up the ranks to chief executive and helped take the company public in 1995. After stints at Microsoft and Technicolor, Faulkner became CEO of manufacturer Pelican Products Inc. in Torrance. The company makes cases and flashlights for clients including the military, and fire and police departments. Since he took the reins in 2006, Pelican landed its highest-profile contract, with the Los Angeles Police Department, and bought out one of its biggest rivals, Hardigg Industries Inc., for a cool $200 million. Upon proffering a vise grip of a handshake, Faulkner sat down with the Business Journal at his Torrance office to talk about the similarities between rugby and business, the psychology of management and the rudest man he ever met.

Question: You studied engineering while playing professional rugby. Were you passionate about both?

Answer: I didn’t work as hard as I should have in high school, because I was more interested in sports. It was really more at the insistence of my father that I went on to do engineering than it was my wish. So from 14 to 24 I was a very successful sportsman, really playing top-class rugby. And I really didn’t see the value of acquiring higher education.

When did you finally see the value of education?

When I was 24 and was busted up so badly with an injury that sport wasn’t going to be my future.

What kind of injury was it?

Knee reconstruction.

How did it happen?

I was playing top-class rugby. I got asked to play in a charity game where they would get a lot of the top players together. And I busted it in a game where it wasn’t competitive, if you can believe it.

Somebody hit you?

Yeah. Somebody hit me. I got back to playing after that. I was in rehabilitation for a year, got back, played one game – and realized I really wasn’t into it. During that time I had started to cement my career with Nimbus, so not only my thirst for the game had declined but my thirst for business and thirst for working in this sort of great environment had overtaken my thirst for wanting to play rugby, to be honest.

What did you love so much about rugby?

The camaraderie of it, the competitive nature of it. Those were the big things. And, frankly, if you said to me what do I most like about a good business, it’s the competitive nature of business and the camaraderie one gets out of business.

What about starting at Nimbus gave you that rush?

I was traveling the world, I was young, 24, 25, and we were being successful. More and more people were coming on board with this idea we were on to something groundbreaking. I had lots of adrenaline rushes from years of rugby, but this was a new thing for me. Here I was, sort of understanding the language and understanding the business and coming to America and, boy, I would be flying 12 times a year to America and loving the culture and loving the environment and loving the way the United States does business. It was infectious, the aggressive way in which we were involved in this business and developing this business and being successful.

Was it easy transitioning from an engineer to the business development side?

No, it wasn’t. It was uphill all the way. I’d be on a train with a DVD player, one of only a few in the world, and sit in front of execs and show them the DVD, and I can remember doing that with music as well. I can remember going with CD audio players, bulky ones under my arm, up to EMI and Virgin Records in London and say, ‘Look, this is going to be the next biggest thing,’ and sometimes struggling to get an audience.

Any particularly tough sells?

One guy whom I won’t name, I remember he kept me waiting in reception for my appointment, me with my device under my arm, and then I went into the room and this big executive put his feet up on the table and took a call and had me sit in front of him for 40 minutes while he was on the call, and we were already 30 minutes late. You had to be patient. The message was he didn’t think it was going to be a very good demonstration and had seen all these new technologies come and go and was pretty belligerent about our meeting. And afterward, probably the rudest man I’ve ever met ended up being a big converter of the technology.

Tell me about your management style.

I think sometimes you’re more of a psychologist because you’re having to work with different people from different walks in life.

What do you mean by psychologist?

If you think of all the different psyches involved in being with all the different departments, I think you’ve got to figure a way to connect with people who have different ways of looking at things, and figuring out how to enthuse them to go and be the best that you can be.

What was one of the bigger mistakes you’ve made at Pelican?

I don’t feel like I’d seen the recession coming, but it didn’t turn out to be a mistake because we bought Hardigg right in the middle of it.

So buying Hardigg was a good thing, but you might not have done it if you’d seen the recession coming?

Perhaps we would not have been as aggressive in buying Hardigg as we were. So I don’t actually view that as a mistake at all.

What is something you view as a mistake then?

I think, if anything, I would say at the moment it’s taking me too long to do what I’m trying to do in some areas. Like we’re trying to grow internationally, and we’re doing very well, but I really feel like I would like to see some areas of business intensify even more because I know the opportunity there. And I’m not good on patience.

Pelican got a lot of press for the LAPD contract to make compact flashlights that couldn’t be used as weapons. Did that put you on the map?

What we were able to do was to show some of the values of who we are in that project, which was collaboration and our technical capabilities. We had engineers who knew what they were talking about. We had manufacturing engineers that knew that we could make the product. We had a big manufacturing base that could make the volume of product that was required. So it would probably be fair to say that while it wasn’t a project that defined who the company is, I think it’s a project that communicated for the first time on a wider scale who the company is.

What do you do in your free time?

Fun for me is golf. I play golf on the weekends locally, so I love that, and if I’m traveling I like to play golf. Seeing family is a big thing. That’s pretty much it.

What do you like about golf?

Oh, again, the camaraderie of golf. (Laughs). The fact that I can still do something competitively with golf. God, everything I do – I’m gonna have to see a psychiatrist. (Laughs). You’ve figured out a lot for me today. It’s one of the things, obviously at my age now, one of the few things I can do competitively.

What’s your typical day like?

Well, first of all, I spend a lot of time on the road. I travel a lot, whether we are exploring a new opportunity or meeting customers. And then when I’m here, I would say I’m pretty hands on in every department, so I try and meet with people that are either running the departments or doing functions within the department. Lots of building programs for new products for new end markets.

When do you get in and leave?

I’m always here by 8, and I typically leave at 7.

What do you do when you get home?

For me my days are quite intense, so when I get home I typically like to switch off, which may mean catching my daughter before she goes to bed, maybe having people around. Particularly toward Thursday, the end of the week, my wife will have invited people around. So, engaging in discussion of stuff that’s outside of work, engaging in discussion with my wife.

What’s something your employees don’t know about you?

Boy, they would know most things. They probably wouldn’t know too much about my upbringing and my background and my youth, actually.

Your upbringing in Wales?

Yeah, I grew up in a small town with working-class parents. I think a lot of people expect you to be the CEO of a big company that’s come from a privileged background and my family had none of that so we worked for everything we got.

What was Wales like?

It’s got its own language; it’s got its own culture. It’s very different from England. It prides itself on being different to England actually. We knew everybody around me. I could tell you everybody that lived in every house growing up and where they lived. They’d be chasing us down the street for stealing their apples and things.

How small was the town?

I don’t know if it was even a town. Mine’s a little village outside of a town called Basseleg. Actually, the town itself is called High Cross and it’s an accumulation of three pretty tough estates.

What did your parents do?

My dad worked in a steelworks and my mom was an executive assistant at an aluminum company.

How do you think your youth has shaped you?

All my family, believe it or not, is very successful. My brother built a business and sold it. My sister’s a professor at the university in Cardiff. My younger brother’s the director of a company. There were a lot of family values, but very disciplined. Between good parenting and good schooling we actually went off the estate to do very well.

Why do you do this?

Twenty-five years and the drug has never worn off. For me, the buzz is having a legacy of building big businesses with lots of employment that were groundbreaking and impactful to people’s lives. There’s a high degree of satisfaction I get when I’ve put my head on the pillow to know that you, for whatever reason, have been involved in a lot of growth stories that have made a difference in people’s lives. Sounds dramatic, but you have, right? Building these businesses and seeing people grow, seeing people evolve and be successful themselves. I think that’s a new adrenaline for me; that’s the buzz I get out of the business.

Lyndon Faulkner

TITLE: Chief Executive

COMPANY: Pelican Products Inc.

BORN: 1960; Newport, Wales

EDUCATION: Diplomas in electrical and electronic engineering from Gwent College of Education and Gwent College of Higher Education, Wales

CAREER TURNING POINT: Joining Nimbus Records to develop CD technology

MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE: Former Nimbus CD Chairman Peter Laister, who taught him that “experience is by intensity, not age;” and his father

PERSONAL: Lives in Palos Verdes Estates with his wife, Lyca; his three daughters are 23, 20 and 9

ACTIVITIES: Golf, sports enthusiast

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