Cynthia Bigelow
Senior Vice President Bigelow Tea Company
Speaker Biography:
Cindi Bigelow is currently Senior Vice President of Bigelow Tea Company located in Fairfield, CT. Bigelow Tea is a family owned and operated business since being founded by her Grandmother, Ruth Campbell Bigelow, in 1945. The company is the market leader in flavored tea in the United States, producing over 1 billion tea bags a year at three facilities employing 350 people. They have also recently added two new product lines, Dessert Coffees and Honey Spreads.
Cindi graduated Magna cum Laude from Boston College with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing. After college, she worked for Joseph E. Seagram’s and Sons, as Sales and Promotion Manager. After two years with Seagram’s, she returned to school for her Master’s in Business Administration, attending the Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management where she graduated in the top 10% of her class with a major in Marketing, Finance and Organizational Behavior.
She began her career at Bigelow Tea Company in 1986. Her first assignment in the Financial Department was to establish an automated costing system. This task would take the company from an antiquated manual system to one that is now computerized, allowing for more timely and accurate reporting.
Upon completing the cost system, Cindi thereafter became the project leader to install a fully integrated ERP system, called BPCS, for the entire organization which inter-relates all disciplines within the company from Sales to Operations to Finance. In order to accomplish this goal, it was imperative to research and learn all aspects of the departments to ensure all necessary information was current, available and accurate.
Once the ERP system was successfully installed, she assumed the duties of Operations Planner to schedule all tea bag production requirements for all three facilities operating on a two-shift basis. This was Bigelow’s first exposure to MRP within the organization! After two years, she was promoted to the position of Materials Manager, running one of the larger departments inside the organization and overseeing a $15 million materials budget. A challenging assignment, the department experienced significant problems with high turnover, low morale, and the ability to get materials to all three facilities on a timely basis. Production down time had become a major issue. After three years in this department, turnover was significantly reduced, plant down time caused by material shortages was reduced 75% and department morale was one of the strongest in the company!
Cindi next became the Customer Service Department Manager where many of the same issues (low moral and high turnover) were coupled with poor response time to customers. Within two years, a completely new and up-to-date customer order processing system was designed for the department, which improved customer response time by more than 150%! Soon the staff turnover rate stabilized and the morale issue was completely turned around.
Returning to the Operations Department as Director of Manufacturing, this area was experiencing some difficult issues: double digit scrap rates, high turnover (over 65% in some areas), and an average production to order ratio of 72%. After 2 ½ years in this assignment, scrap rates were averaging 1 to 3% in all plants; the production to order ratio was running consistently at 100%, costs of goods were lowered by 3%, and turnover was greatly reduced!
Cindi was then promoted to Vice President of Operations, overseeing the Purchasing, Quality Control, Planning, Distribution and Manufacturing Departments. Over 300 employees were in her area of responsibility while controlling over 60% of a $75 million budget. In her three years on the job, she measurably improved communication, morale and efficiency. Cost of goods was reduced an additional 1 ½ percentage points.
Cindi then moved to the Sales and Marketing Division of Bigelow Tea. In this capacity she is concentrating on trade promotion effectiveness, market development and the development of new distribution channels. Since she joined the Sales and Marketing team, the company recently launched a new line of vanilla teas targeting a younger audience. Cindi has also taken on a public relations campaign utilizing TV and print media to share the good news about Bigelow’s quality and the health benefits of tea. With this last move inside the company, Cindi has have been exposed to almost every major area within the organization.
In all of her assignments at Bigelow Tea, Cindi uses a team approach and is the first to say that all of her accomplishments are the efforts of those people around her. Her theory is to provide them the opportunity to succeed, remove the roadblocks and focus on their strengths. With this knowledge base, she hopes to help lead the company into the future in order to keep Bigelow Tea vibrant, active and an exciting company for the next generation to come.
The download and use of these audio recordings is made available to the public at no charge. The materials may be copied and shared in their current form, but they may not be edited or altered in any way. Full ownership and all copyrights to the recordings and materials remains with The Entrepreneurship Institute.
