When Fred Reid took over Flexjet in late August 2008, the new president was almost immediately hit with challenges at the fractional jet ownership company.
“Within about 15 days of my taking over, Lehman Brothers went under, and all those fun times began,” he says. “The company, when I got here, had been on a very, very positive trajectory in terms of revenue, growth, profit, market share, so I was dealing with financial crisis, and its sudden impact on many of sectors of the economy. That was the biggest challenge.”
Many of Flexjet’s customers were feeling the pinch, which in turn affected Flexjet, so Reid had to make changes quickly.
“We reduced the fleet size by about 10 to 15 percent, and we had the difficult challenge of being overstaffed in a number of arenas in crews and overheads, so we had some staff reductions, and we had to really examine what we were going to do on the marketing and sales front because new business was drying up. Existing customers were nervous, so we experienced significant downturn in new sales, but we did a very good job of retention of our existing base,” he says. In order to get Flexjet, a division of the $19.4 billion Bombardier Inc. (TSX: BBD.B), through the downturn effectively, Reid had to focus on retaining his current customers and communicating with employees.
