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PROFILE
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Gilles Morel
At the Heart
Home Life
of
GILLES MOREL
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT @ Whirlpool Corporation
& PRESIDENT @ Whirlpool EMEA
The Whirlpool Corporation is one of planet’s most famous home appliances
brands. We caught up with Whirlpool’s EMEA president, Gilles Morel, to
discuss the challenges brought by sustained, long-term success.
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eadquartered in Michigan,
USA but with a truly glob-
al footprint, Whirlpool has
been one of the leading
names in its sector for the
best part of a century. Founded in 1911 as the
Upton Machine Company, dabbling in ear-
ly forms of mechanical laundry devices, it
changed its name to Whirlpool Corporation
in 1950. Since then, it has grown into a corpo-
rate giant with annual revenues in excess of
$20bn and nearly 61,000 employees spread
across seventy research and manufacturing
centres globally in 2022.
Current Executive Vice President Whirl-
pool Corporation and President EMEA Gilles
Morel joined the company in April 2019, fol-
lowing thirty years of executive experience,
including a long stint at confectionary giant
Mars. The prospect of working for Whirlpool
was one that excited him. It represented a
challenge, in which he would need to hit the
ground running while utilising his past expe-
rience to its fullest.
“When I joined Whirlpool, the thing which
most excited me was how much this indus-
try impacts people’s daily lives,” Mr Morel
recalls. “You know the idea that with this
company you can create the best kitchen and
the best laundry facilities, and that improves
life at home, this really appealed to me. I am
a family man myself. I have six children, so I
understand how important these things are.
Of course, I was also attracted by how well
known and established the brand already was
and the other brand names it owns.”
It is worth noting that as well as appliances
sold under the Whirlpool marque, European
favourite Hotpoint, North American stal-
warts KitchenAid and Maytag, the popular
Chinese line Diqua, and many others are also
owned by the company. This provides market
presence and strong consumer loyalty across
nearly all of the world’s regions. Nonetheless,
there were still challenges to be overcome.
Charting the course
“When I started, my mandate was really to
carry on the journey,” Mr Morel explains. “It
had started thirty years before when Whirl-
pool acquired Philips’ appliance business in
Europe, and lately with incorporating Inde-
sit Company’s operations in EMEA. So what
I needed to do was create a path for sus-
tainable growth and a profitable future for
the company, for the employees and for the
consumers. It was, however, a difficult time.
The company had been making losses after
acquiring Indesit, so someone needed to turn
it around, while continuing to innovate, to
create the best everyday appliances. Here we
have a saying that ‘There is no wrong way to
do the right thing’, so that philosophy is al-
ways at the forefront of our work.”
Despite the sizeable task in front of him,
the new executive VP and EMEA president
was able to draw on the wealth of experience
gained from his past career. In particular, his
years at Mars were of great help.
“Although the sectors are different,” he
states, “there are many similarities. Both are
trusted brands and consumer-facing busi-
nesses in competitive markets. You know,
people may look at chocolate and washing
machines and struggle to see the connection,
but in a business sense, there were many links.
The ways in which we build the brand, for ex-
ample, was very similar. Fundamentally, it’s
about putting the consumer and our people at
the core of what we do every single day.”
The importance of innovation
With that said, there were also key differ-
ences, to which Mr Morel needed to adapt.
Foremost of these was the rapid pace of tech-
nological development. As with any manufac-
turing industry, constant modernisation
PROFILE
|
Gilles Morel
It’s about putting the consumer
and our people at the core of
what we do every single day.
H
It’s vital for us to stay
ahead of the curve.
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and awareness of important trends such as
sustainability are crucial for Whirlpool. This
was perhaps not so much the case in his pre-
vious role.
“A chocolate bar created in 1920, or 1940
or whenever, is still much the same today,”
says Mr Morel. “We may market it differently,
but essentially, the product is the same. With
Whirlpool, the opposite is true. This compa-
ny has a historical commitment to R&D. It’s
in our DNA, from creating the world’s first
home dishwasher in 1949 and the first combi-
nation washer / dryer in 1961 to some of our
more recent products. It’s vital for us to stay
ahead of the curve.”
In order to sustain the momentum that
Whirlpool has enjoyed over such a long pe-
riod of time, clear management and robust
decision-making were required. The new
EMEA president provided that. Results were
positive, and continued growth was achieved.
Despite this, Mr Morel is loathe to shine too
much of the spotlight on himself.
“Things have been going well,” he explains.
“But it is important to remember that it is
not all about Gilles. Soon after starting, I as-
sembled a high-performing leadership team.
PROFILE
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Gilles Morel
Those people were very important, and all of
them were extremely committed to put the
business on a profitable, sustainable growth
path. I tweaked the strategy to focus more
on ‘built-in’ kitchen appliances, but the team
was very aligned, and that was extremely im-
portant in achieving our goals.”
The digital element
Another significant development has been
the increased digitisation of the sales arm.
This was also implemented by Mr Morel af-
ter taking up his executive position, a process
which was then accelerated during the COV-
ID pandemic. “When I joined, only 20 per-
cent of our sales were through e-commerce,
but that is now as high as 50 percent in some
regions,” he states.
Naturally, as well as this welcome result,
the pandemic presented considerable chal-
lenges. Lockdowns meant that offices and
manufacturing sites became ghost towns
overnight, while logistics, particularly those
covering long distances, became impossible.
It was a stop-start period, which affected all
areas of the business and seriously disrupted
the supply chain.
“We survived,” Mr Morel explains, “be-
cause most of our suppliers are local, which
enabled us to react quickly. This is something
of a competitive advantage for us, in compar-
ison to other leading players in our sector. As
a result, I believe we have emerged from the
COVID era more resilient than we were be-
fore and in a very strong position, especially
with regard to the supply chain. This is espe-
cially important for a company like ours, built
around innovation. Many of our suppliers do
not only supply components or raw materi-
als but act as critical enablers of sustainable
solutions.”
With the groundwork laid and the pandemic
navigated, plans for the medium-term future
have been formulated. Much of these cen-
tre around exciting new products shortly to
reach the global market.
“One example,” Mr Morel describes, “is a
new dishwasher called Maxi Space, which we
are launching soon. It has 20 percent greater
capacity than a regular dishwasher without
taking any more space. The secret is in its
compact motor, and it incorporates our sixth
sense AI technology, which enables energy
and water use reduction.”
It is with thinking such as this, alongside
further growth, both organic and through
acquisition and partnerships, that Whirlpool
intends to continue its century-long corpo-
rate success story into the future.
“As business leaders, we have a huge re-
sponsibility,” Mr Morel concludes. “To go
beyond the limits of what we thought pos-
sible, while reaffirming our commitment to
sustainability. That requires creativity and
a passion for learning. At Whirlpool, this is
what we are all about.”
My mandate was
really to carry on the
journey.