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player ready...A housewares company with a long history in Chicago has tapped a turnaround artist to try and heat up things in its own kitchen, so to speak.
World Kitchen Inc., the company that owns such venerable kitchen brands as Corningware, Pyrex, Chicago Cutlery and Revere, among others, is expected to announce formally Wednesday that it has hired Ralph Denisco as its new president and chief operating officer.
Denisco, 54, who will operate out of the company’s North American offices in Rosemont, has spent more than two years with vitamin and supplement maker Rexall Sundown. He left last summer after Dutch specialty foods firm Royal Numico NV sold the $500 million company to NBTY Inc.
Denisco’s position is new at the company, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in January 2003. He will oversee sales, marketing, and operations throughout North America while also heading World Kitchen’s worldwide supply chain network.
Denisco brings to World Kitchen consumer product and industrial experience. Before Rexall, Denisco headed the management buyout of Nestle’s Industrial business, Norse LP. Earlier he was president and CEO of Nestle Ice Cream Co.
A native of Chicago’s Little Italy neighborhood, Denisco’s charge will be to breathe new life into brands that suffered from little or no marketing in recent years. More than half of World Kitchen’s sales occur in the last half of the year. No doubt the company wants to find ways to even it out.
World Kitchen, formed in 2000 following Corning Consumer Products Co.’s purchase of Ekco Group and General Housewares Corp., filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2002.
Denisco will report to James A. Sharman, president and chief executive of WKI Holding Co., which has corporate offices in Reston, Va. The company tapped Spencer Stuart’s Gregory Welch to handle the search.
“Ralph has streamlined operations, reduced costs, improved productivity and significantly increased profitability in each of his previous assignments,” Sharman said.
The company dates to 1888 when Edward Katzinger founded a commercial baking pan company in Chicago, which became Ekco Housewares Co.
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