A Course to the Top

The day an acquisition closes, Vander Zanden and his management team go on-site to the newly purchased company and explain what they’re planning to do. “We let them know right up front if we’re going to close the DC, for instance. When we buy a company, we move quickly to integrate the back end: the purchasing, IT systems and DCs. We don’t worry as much about integrating the front end — though if there’s obvious overlap, we’ll try to work that out,” he says.