"2021 was a team victory" - Interview with member of the board Dirk Damaschke

How was 2021 for MEYLE? 

The last year was challenging. However, despite Covid-related complications in our daily business and challenges along the supply chain, we have seen strong growth at MEYLE. My old handball coach would say: “This was a team victory”. And that’s what it was. All colleagues at MEYLE did a fantastic job in each department. 2021 has shown how strong the MEYLE-spirit is amongst our people - and what this spirit is worth in difficult times. I am proud to be part of the MEYLE-family and I am really looking forward to spending more time with our colleagues and customers in workshops and in the office in 2022. 

And what has been your personal highlight in 2021?

Besides the overall success in terms of our increased turnover in 2021, there was not this ONE big highlight in the past year. I would rather say there were several highlights. One highlight was for example that despite the pandemic situation, we were able to foster values like enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit in our work culture among our colleagues. That is something which really made me proud. 

Based on your experience from 2021 – what would you do differently in 2022?

The last year has shown that we are headed in the right direction. Nevertheless, we want to foster the collaboration with our international affiliates to work even closer together and to ultimately continue serving all our markets and international clients in the best possible way. Although I learnt that mobile work at home can be very efficient and allows flexibility to combine professional and private life in a very effective way, so I can for instance teach my small kids to play the guitar, it is always better to meet up with colleagues face-to-face at least once in a while. Especially in these challenging times, personal exchange is so important and thus, this is something I intend to dedicate more time to this year. 

What are your goals and milestones for 2022 to make it a successful year?

We have many exciting projects coming up in 2022. A key belief of my colleague Karl Gaertner will lead us the way to be successful: “It must be as easy as possible to do business with us”. That’s what customer centricity is all about. Keeping this in mind, we will continue to focus on our quality management. We will further expand our product portfolio significantly while also increasing our digital solutions and services for our customers such as the digital driver portal or the e-learning modules. Further milestones will be the focus on our new market presence in the US, our advancement of our e-mobility portfolio and reaching our sustainable development goal to be those with the better and more sustainable automotive parts, producing CO2-neutral products starting with MEYLE-HD steering & suspension products in 2022 – this means we calculated, reduced and compensated the CO2 emissions.

We thank Dirk Damaschke for sharing his thoughts and his vision with us. To a successful 2022 at MEYLE!