Jarden, a leading provider of consumer products—Mr. Coffee, First Alert, Oster and many others—is the 14th largest importer from China—about 80,000 containers per year.
CNBC
Jarden's Martin Franklin
The company is seeing a very tight supply chain, with costs going up. For that reason, more companies are shipping goods to retailers.
If "retail demand wasn't pretty good, you wouldn't see that happening," Martin Franklin, CEO of Jarden , told CNBC today.
Last year, the company acted more conservatively by taking their inventories down and "managed to generate about $680 million of cash on the back of that," Franklin said.
This year "we are putting money back into working capital, but it is really driven by POS (point of sale)," he said, adding, "we are seeing good performance of people coming in and buying product off-the-shelf and replenishment going on."
In terms of opportunistic deals, the CEO said he looks for a "catalyst" in the overall dynamic between his company (as a buyer) and a distressed seller.
For example, the company acquired American Household in 2005, which was made up of Sunbeam and Coleman businesses.
The opportunity was, "you didn't have people who would buy both businesses. That gave us an opportunity to come in and put a transaction together," Franklin concluded, adding, "it's the direct negotiation that matters."
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