In the initial phase of the Growth Game Plan, we transformed from a holding company to an operating company, established strategic portfolio roles for our segments and strengthened our leadership team. Now, we’re entering the strategic phase where we begin shaping our future and bringing our new operating model to speed. Here’s how it works.

The Growth Game Plan is Newell Rubbermaid’s strategic blueprint for becoming a larger, faster-growing, more global and more profitable company. Our transformative strategy is unlocking areas of trapped growth, developing performance-driven teams and leadership structures, allocating resources to priority growth opportunities and improving execution across the enterprise — all of which will accelerate brand growth in both developed and emerging markets.

Under the Growth Game Plan the company is organized around two separate, but interdependent, core activity systems. The Development pillar focuses on creating high-impact, innovative and functional product ideas and marketing campaigns that distinguish our brands in the marketplace. The Delivery pillar then brings these products to market successfully and maximizes their commercial value by working strategically with customers and suppliers.

Our business partner functions provide key support as the organization executes the Growth Game Plan. Finance/IT ensures we have the funds and technology to implement our vision and provides the business analytics needed to measure our progress. Legal helps scope new opportunities, while ensuring regulatory compliance; and Human Resources helps attract, retain and nurture the key talent we need to execute our strategy.

Our winning capabilities will distinguish our brands in the marketplace by driving more integrated and more strategic growth plans. Within the Development pillar, Design and Research & Development (R&D) help create new, innovative and appealing products, while Marketing helps cultivate global brand equity. Within the Delivery pillar, Customer Development works to connect more strategically with customers and Supply Chain optimizes sourcing and product delivery.

Our strategy, core activity pillars, business partner functions and winning capabilities ultimately are leveraged across our five operating segments — Writing, Commercial Products, Tools, Home Solutions and Baby & Parenting — to accelerate performance. Among these five businesses, we are making sharper portfolio choices to strategically allocate our investments of human capital and financial resources.

Learn more about our progress against the Growth Game Plan and how we are driving the operating model to speed.


Letter to Shareholders

Newell Rubbermaid performed solidly in 2013, demonstrating sequential improvement over 2012 and delivering on our promise to consistently do what we say we are going to do. We’re streamlining our organization, investing in our best ideas and implementing the key drivers that will fuel consistent, sustainable and profitable growth for Newell Rubbermaid. The Growth Game Plan is our road map for accelerated performance, and we have begun to see the strengthening of our results.

DELIVERING STRONG RESULTS

Newell Rubbermaid’s core sales grew 3.2 percent in 2013. Our normalized operating margin increased 30 basis points to 13.3 percent. Normalized earnings per share rose 9.6 percent to $1.83, an all-time record, while operating cash flow came in at $605 million. These strong results allowed us to reward shareholders by allocating $644 million to dividend payments and share repurchases.

net sales (in billions)
core sales growth
Normalized Earnings Per Share
dividends paid per share

Our segment results were equally encouraging. Core sales grew across all segments, led by Baby & Parenting, which delivered outstanding 10.2 percent year-over-year growth. This segment is an early success story in our Growth Game Plan strategy. Driven by insights, product innovation and strong customer development execution, our Baby business has successfully transitioned from an “Incubate for Growth” to a “Win Where We Are” part of our portfolio.

Core sales in the Tools segment rose 3.4 percent, largely attributable to our success in Brazil with expanded product offerings. Both our innovative double-sided hacksaw launch and expansion of our portfolio of hand tools have driven share and distribution gains in Brazil.

Our Commercial Products segment grew core sales 3.9 percent, fueled by distribution wins in North America and strength in Latin America, where we are investing in selling systems and local manufacturing.

In the Writing segment, core sales grew modestly. Strong growth in Latin America and continued share gains for our Sharpie® and Paper Mate® brands, driven by new product innovation and increased advertising and promotion, were offset by weakness in our Fine Writing business and in the office superstore channel.

Our Home Solutions segment grew core sales 2.9 percent on the success of our Furious Five promotional campaigns on Rubbermaid® products and significant new distribution for the Calphalon® business.

We strengthened our portfolio during 2013 with the successful disposal of our Hardware and Teach Platform businesses. Sharpening the portfolio has enabled us to focus our attention on scaling our five core business segments.

Growth throughout our business is the direct result of focusing our people and financial resources on delivering new ideas to market in 2013. This focus resulted in a number of great wins including:

  • Sustained strong innovations on Baby, like our Graco® FastAction™ fold joggers and Graco® Modes™ 3-in-1 strollers
  • Expansion of the Irwin® tool line in Brazil and strengthening our company’s National Tradesmen Day
  • Commercial Products innovation, featuring a new line of hospitality products for five-star hotels called Executive Series
  • The introduction of Sharpie® Neon markers, ongoing support for Sharpie® metallic markers and breakthrough advertising for Paper Mate® InkJoy® pens
  • The Furious Five, our first-ever set of merchandising events on a corporate scale.

These and other brand-support efforts were funded through Project Renewal, our multi-year cost savings initiative, which is allowing us to significantly increase investments in consumer insights, design, marketing and e-commerce support for targeted brands and business segments. Through the end of 2013, Project Renewal resulted in cumulative savings of approximately $200 million. These savings have enabled us to increase investment in advertising and to establish a new set of winning capabilities.

NEW CAPABILITIES, NEW POTENTIAL

There is a new Newell Rubbermaid that is beginning to come into focus. While we’re very pleased with our progress, we believe there is more opportunity ahead of us than behind us. The past two years have been about establishing the Growth Game Plan and putting it into action. In 2014, our operating model will move into a higher gear — one that increases the impact of our emerging capabilities in Design, Marketing, Customer Development and Supply Chain.

In early 2014, we will open our new design center in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and our marketing and insights teams are filling the innovation funnel with new ideas and concepts that are achieving positive test results. These ideas, when supported with stronger advertising and increased investment, will help distinguish our brands in the marketplace and accelerate the company’s growth trajectory.

Our new global Supply Chain organization will sustain savings and efficiency programs at levels consistent with Project Renewal. This level of productivity and efficiency will ensure that we have the funds to support an increasingly strong pipeline of growth ideas from Marketing and Design. Our efforts will focus across all five supply chain disciplines of Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Serve.

At the same time, Customer Development will become the partner for growth for our customers. We will work strategically with customers to grow our categories through integrated marketing and merchandising plans that leverage the increasing deep set of growth ideas we bring to market. Customer Development will increase collaboration and invest in new capabilities such as category management, shopper insight, and shopper marketing. The resulting joint business plans we develop will create a competitive advantage for Newell Rubbermaid as we work to comparatively grow the market and build our brands.

MORE TO COME

I’m proud of what the Newell Rubbermaid team has achieved in the 10 quarters since we embarked on this journey. Whether I look at our innovation pipeline, our new global supply chain function, or deeper customer partnerships, I see many impactful activities that did not even exist a year ago. That’s how far we have travelled and how fast we are moving. That’s the power of the Growth Game Plan.

Our people are energized by our progress and excited about the challenge of capturing Newell Rubbermaid’s full upside potential. We’ve come a long way, but we’re not yet where we want to be. This team has proven they can drive delivery while simultaneously driving change, so we’re excited by what comes next. The promise of the Growth Game Plan is increasingly becoming a reality.

On behalf of all my colleagues at Newell Rubbermaid, thank you for your support throughout 2013.


Michael B. Polk
President and Chief Executive Officer

Sharpening Our Portfolio Choices

The Growth Game Plan is a transformative strategy that calls for sharper portfolio choices and increased investment in our brands and capabilities to drive accelerated performance and make Newell Rubbermaid a bigger, faster-growing, more global, more profitable company. To fund this effort, we are identifying unproductive costs and converting them into fuel for increased spending on innovation, marketing and selling activities in support of our best growth ideas and opportunities. Our Win Bigger businesses — Commercial Products, Tools and Writing — are the major drivers of future company growth and our first priority for expansion in fast-growing emerging markets. Our Win Where We Are businesses — Home Solutions and Baby & Parenting — are expected to grow ahead of their categories in their current geographies by partnering more strategically with customers and developing new distribution channels. Our Incubate for Growth businesses — Endicia and Healthcare — are in the early development phase and will receive the resources they need to develop into compelling growth platforms.

2013 highlights
  • Created a global R&D, design, insights and marketing organization focused exclusively on building the strategic growth agenda for each of our brands and categories
  • Established a new Innovation Team to generate ideas and support new concept development
  • Reduced the number of brand activities to concentrate on fewer, bigger, more impactful ideas
  • Streamlined North American operations into one design hub and two marketing hubs
  • Initiated an accelerated e-commerce plan, increasing funding under the direction of an experienced leadership team

Mark S. Tarchetti
Chief Development Officer

William A. Burke III
Chief Operating Officer

2013 highlights
  • Restructured Customer Development to strengthen the partnership with our customers
  • Created a new global Supply Chain organization to optimize operations across the enterprise
  • Increased market share and brand awareness through Furious Five promotional campaigns in North America
  • Simplified operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa to increase profitability and drive long-term growth
  • Centralized North American customer service functions to provide a center of excellence for customer relations across business segments

Douglas L. Martin
Chief Financial Officer

2013 highlights:
  • Grew core sales 3.2 percent
  • Increased normalized earnings per share 9.6 percent to a record $1.83
  • Reduced outstanding debt by $82 million and increased cash by $43 million
  • Allocated $644 million to dividends and share repurchases
  • Expanded the global SAP implementation to Latin America with the successful launch in Brazil
Legal highlights:
Human Resources highlights: