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THE MERITZ OF MARITZ
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A Billion Dollar Business that Created its Own Demand
By Linda F. Jarrett
Steve Maritz represents the fourth generation of a family that started small and rocketed to the top by virtue of a little luck and a lot of hard work. Or, “Adapting to change and growing,” as he says.
Started in 1894 as a jewelry company by Edward Maritz, Steve’s great-grandfather, Maritz Inc. has grown into a multi-national corporation ranking 227 last year on Forbes’ 500 Best Private Companies List, with $1.2 billion in revenues and 4,090 employees world-wide.
“Necessity is the mother of invention, and that’s certainly true in the case of the evolution for Maritz,” Maritz says. “When the retail jewelry business dried up in the Depression, my grandfather came up with the idea of selling watches and jewelry to companies as service awards instead of to individuals. That was the beginning of the modern day Maritz.”
In 1930, Maritz Watch and Manufacturing Company became Maritz Sales Builders, and distributed their first incentive awards book. In 1958, the company became Maritz Travel Company with the purchase of Holiday House Travel, a small travel agency in Detroit, Mich.
“We were thinking about incentive programs and what would be appealing,” Maritz says. “Someone then had the brilliant idea that a trip to Hawaii would be more exciting than a toaster.”
MARITZ SEGMENTS
Looking to expand, Maritz listened to its customers and developed businesses that would aid them. Besides expanding Incentives and Travel, the company branched into Research, Loyalty Marketing, Rewards, Interactions and Learning.
Maritz Research helps companies understand their customers, employees and assess attitudes and behaviors by examining why people select a product or service, what are their experiences when they use the product, and why people return, defect or buy more.
Maritz Research is responsible for more than 75 percent of the U.S. automotive industry’s customer satisfaction surveys. The company’s Maumee, Ohio facility, mails 40 million surveys per year, 32 million of which are automotive and eight million for the hospital and financial industry.
| Marketing materials depict the portfolio of Maritz services. |
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Maritz Incentives helps people understand their business goals and motivates them to achieve them. This segment runs over 500 incentive programs worldwide.
Maritz Rewards provides comprehensive award and fulfillment solutions that connect products to people and drives proven results.
Maritz Travel motivates by experience. It manages 2,000 meetings and incentive travel programs each year with over 400,000 participants. While most people plan their own vacations or trips, Maritz says, “They can’t get our type of experience. It’s very unique and there’s something about sharing the experience with others that makes it special.”
Maritz Interactions produces meetings and events to engage, enlighten and motivate people and help them understand their clients’ strategies and products.
Maritz Learning works with companies to educate their sales teams, customer service representatives and partners. This segment helped launch the Toyota Prius hybrid car.
Maritz Loyalty Marketing helps companies establish a lifetime of commitment from its best customers through motivation and reward. The business works with eight of the top ten banks to run their customer rewards programs. “We understand how customers behave and apply certain loyalty applications to try to make customers repeat their purchases more often,” Maritz says.
“The whole portfolio of Maritz services is designed to either work together or to work independently to help achieve the client’s objective,” Maritz says. “For example, we start with research to determine and think about a client’s customer experience. We then can bring in learning and incentive programs as we have for many clients to help them achieve the goals identified in the research for their end-customer.”
THE ROAD UP
Following his family into the company business was not Maritz’s plan after his graduation from Princeton 25 years ago.
“I don’t really remember what I planned on doing,” he says, “but I ended up working for Madison Financial who designed and operated marketing programs for banks.
From time to time, he would run into “Maritz sales people” at bank conventions where they would encourage him to join the company.
The historic break-up of AT&T in 1983 provided the impetus for his jump to Maritz as an account executive.
With the idea that AT&T would now be competitive and a target for Maritz services, he could not resist. “The idea of being involved in a company that underwent one of the biggest break-ups in American corporate history was pretty exciting.”
Maritz rose through the ranks, running the sales and marketing organization before becoming president and chief operating officer in 1997. In 1998, he succeeded his father, William, as CEO.
He says one “has to adapt continuously to changing market needs” and that Maritz Inc. has had to create its own demand.
“There was no incentive business before my grandfather thought it up,” he says. “While there is a demand for most of what we do, we do not make commodities like gas or oil, so there is not an automatic demand for them.”
“We have to look for opportunities so we can help our customers achieve their goals,” he says. “Oftentimes in ways they haven’t considered. It’s a fortunate position to be able to create your own demand.”
 This in-house logo is used to communicate the future direction of Maritz. |
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THE WAY TO MOTIVATE
Running a company that works on motivation and incentives requires some knowledge of people. Perhaps Maritz’s B.S. degree in organizational psychology has helped to that degree.
“I’ve been watching people for 47 years,” he says. “People are fascinating and Maritz tries to practice what we preach. We’re motivated by a lot of different things.”
He walked over to his desk and picked up a small bronze pyramid. “This is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”
“Maslow hypothesized, and what I believe is true, is that people will focus on whatever need is not met,” Maritz says. “If you don’t have the most basic ‘physical comfort,’ not much else is going to matter than getting out of the rain. Then comes ‘security,’ the fact that you’re safe. Then ‘social acceptance,’ ‘personal esteem,’ then what Maslow said people rarely, if ever, achieve is ‘self realization.’ A lot of our programs work in these areas of being specific with people about what they need to do to achieve.”
“You do this by communicating to them,” he explains. “Giving them feedback, helping them do a better job, giving them tangible symbols of their success, be it a television or a trip to Hawaii. These are things or memories that will drive people.”
One of the most popular Maritz programs, “Run Through the Warehouse,” gives 45 teams of two people a 60 second run through the Maritz warehouse, where they average $4,000 per cart.
The same theory holds true for people within Maritz, where the motto is to “Work hard, have fun, get the job done.”
Maritz says, “I believe you should be able to have fun and work, and the work we do is fun and gratifying. We make people’s lives better and that’s a good thing.”
The fact that Maritz Inc. could be a Fortune 500 Company if it were public is not lost on him.
“There are advantages and disadvantages to being public,” he says. “Not that either of them is perfect, but being private allows you to not be beholden to Wall Street and quarterly earnings.”
THE PERSONAL SIDE
Maritz says they have not “scratched the surface” as far as future opportunities go. “We have great clients. We’ve brought in interesting and fun business. There’s plenty of competition and plenty of challenges. All in all, I’m very optimistic about our future.”
He adds that while Maritz does have competitors, none of them can do everything that Maritz does. “And we want to keep it that way. We’re constantly shaping and reshaping to make sure that we’ve got a unique advantage.”
The best and worst part of his job is the same—people.
“It’s clearly the best part. Watching and helping them succeed, making their lives better,” he says. “But it can also be the worst. You have to make difficult decisions from time to time that affect people’s lives, and they are occasionally disappointed by decisions you make or things that happen, and that’s painful.”
This topic segued to the public, ongoing dissension in the Maritz family. He acknowledged that the situation was “hard and still is. It’s a shame that they’re not happy with what they were given. It’s their lot in life, so be it.”
Maritz does not describe himself as a “workaholic,” although he admits to thinking about work much of the time. “Do you work when you think about it? Or is it just at your desk? How do you tell?”
He and his wife Jeanne, have three boys, 15, 12, and 9, and three dogs, two English Setters and a black Labrador. They all like the outdoors and spend as much time as possible at their country acreage west of town. Here he hunts, fishes, and “does things with chain saws.”
And if he were not the head of this successful company, what would he be doing? “Probably something outdoors. An outfitter in Alaska or Africa.”
And his own personal favorite destination? “Africa. You go most places to see what people have created, you go to Africa to see what God created.”
1894—Edward Maritz, a man of Swiss-French descent, founded the E. Maritz Jewerly Manufacturing Company in St. Louis, MO., at 3213 Magnolia St.
1918—The company drops its jewelry business and focuses on fine, imported watches that are sold by 15 salesmen in St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Los Angeles.
1930—Maritz forms a new division called Maritz Sales Builders, selling watches, jewelry and other merchandise to companies as incentive awards.
1950—James Maritz and Lloyd Maritz divide the company. Lloyd retains Maritz Jewelry Company, and James moves Maritz Sales Builders to a new location at 4200 Forest Park Blvd. in St. Louis.
1958—Maritz enters the incentive travel business, with acquistion of Holiday House Travel Center in Detroit.
1973—Maritz enters the marketing research business with the acquisition of Lee Creative Research. Today, Maritz Research is one of the world's largest marketing research companies.
1974—Maritz forms an international division and opens offices in Marlow, England, under the name Maritz U.K.
1981—Maritz acquires Traveler's Services Inc., the first in a series of acquisitions establishing Maritz as one of the nation's largest corporate travel suppliers.
1989—Maritz enters the fulfillment business with a large-scale program for Citicorp, shipping nearly 1.5 million merchandise items in its first year.
Maritz Inc. exceeds $1 billion in revenue for the first time.
1998—Bill Maritz turns over his CEO title to Steve Maritz. With the move, Steve becomes the fourth generation of the Maritz family to lead the company since its inception in 1894.
2000—Maritz launches eMaritz, an internet-based incentive and recognition offering, which later becomes the technology platform that now serves as the backbone for Maritz Incentives.
Three Days of Celebration
General Chairman for the last two years for Fair St. Louis, Maritz, this year, assumed the position of Chairman of the Fair Foundation, the “money side,” in his words. Arnold Donald has succeeded Maritz as general chair this year.
Maritz says he is not that “driven” about putting St. Louis in the national limelight as far as Fourth of July Celebrations go.
Fair St. Louis (originally known as the V.P. Fair when it began in 1981) is held on the Jefferson Expansion Memorial for three days and billed as “America’s Biggest Birthday Party.” However, regardless of attendance which numbers in the hundreds of thousands, the Fair does not get much national attention.
“I’m not sure what advantage that would be,” Maritz says. “Promoting the city is what it’s about and, from that perspective that would be nice. But the essence of the fair is more for the region than about the region. It’s a great event that brings together all shapes, sizes, and colors of people from a lot of places in and around St. Louis, and it’s pretty neat to see that many people come together for three days and celebrate this great country in which we live, enjoy the city and Downtown.”
The Fair will be held this year on July 2, 3, and 4. |
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