The other Michelin man

By Dick Hughes  

MAY 9, 2011 10:36 a.m. (0)

Damien Michelin learned a poignant lesson growing up as a child of privilege in France. It guides him today.

“When I was 9 years old, I was on vacation with my parents, and at the house where we were staying sometimes we would have homeless people come and ask for food,” he said.

“One day around lunchtime, there was knocking at the door, and one came asking for food.  I made fun of him.  My mom told me to go to the kitchen, fix him a sandwich and give him the sandwich.”

Ever since, says Michelin, he tries to hold to a “responsibility to share, not to keep to yourself.  The more we receive, the more we should share.  That’s how I see it.  It is a big responsibility, and it can get overwhelming but not if you can help one person at a time.”

Michelin, a member of one the world’s prominent and wealthy industrial families, agreed to a rare media interview at the tire maker’s North American headquarters in Greenville, where he has worked for several years in middle management positions and before that in plant level jobs.

“That’s fine, that’s how I am,” he says of the fact that his family ties never have put him in the public eye.

Gracious and unassuming, he tells how a one-year “stop” at Clemson University began a love affair with the United States and how the values of the Michelin family shaped his societal view and that of the company that bears his name.

He is a great grandson of Edouard Michelin, who, along with his brother, founded Michelin in 1888; the son of Francois Michelin, who ran the company for nearly 40 years, and brother of Edouard Michelin, who became managing director in 1999 and died in a boating accident off the coast of Brittany in 2006.

He was 42.

Upon Edouard’s death, Michelin turned to co-managing director Michel Rollier, a second cousin, as the first non-direct descendent of Edouard Michelin to run the company since an interlude in the 1930s.

For Damien Michelin, who along with another brother, Benoit, was working at Michelin, it was the right decision.

Asked if he aspired to lead the company, Damien paused, collecting his thoughts as he was wont to do before answering.

“There are two things: ambition and the ability to do.  I think it is more important to have someone at the head of the company who is able to manage a very large company, so that is the route that is being taken, and I think it is a good thing.   As for me, it is to do what I can in the job I am doing.”

He’s customer inventory manager for large customers.

He said he was satisfied with his place in the company.

“Somebody always wants more, but you have to be careful that you do what you are cut out to do.  A big title costs too much life.”

He sees his family position as meaningless in the workplace.

“It is so important for everybody, including me, to be yourself.  Then quickly the last name disappears and Damien appears. I feel comfortable around people, and I think people feel comfortable around me.”

Seemingly unconcerned with financial aspects of Michelin and the family stake in it – in 2002, Forbes estimated the family controlled 25 percent of the publicly traded company – Damien shifts the conversation back to humanist values.

“The importance is not what percentage the family owns of the company.  More important are the values and strengths of the company.  The family very strongly believes in respect for people, respect for the facts, and respect for the customers, values by which we led this company.

“If other people, other employees, other managers, have the same values and beliefs, that is what really counts in the end.”

Damien Michelin left France for the United States in 1980 “right after high school to go to Clemson.  The plan was to stop for one year and then go back to France, and I have been here since.  That year just got longer.”

He got an undergraduate degree in computer science from Clemson in 1984, a master’s in applied math from the University of South Carolina in 1987 and an MBA from what was then the Marshall School of Business at USC in 1991.

Although his parents “would have been glad had I come back to France, I stayed in the United States because I love this country.  It is a choice I made. It had nothing to do with the company.  It was just something I wanted to do.”

In 2001, he became a naturalized citizen.

Raised in a devoutly Catholic family that believes in living their faith – a brother is a priest and a sister a nun – Damien took a leave from work that year to live and work for 18 months as a volunteer in a New Jersey Convent House shelter for homeless young people that was begun by a Franciscan priest.

“I find peace or happiness in being with people who may not be as fortunate as I am but may be more fortunate than I in many respects.  In social work, you receive more than you give. That’s what I enjoy doing.”

Having turned 50 recently and getting “my AARP card in the mail,” Damien plans “to keep working for this company.  I love this company. I love what it does. I love its values.”

Damien’s interest in getting off the beaten track in traveling merges with another interest, photography.

But that’s not all.

“I want to do more in the social work area.  I want to explore more of the United States.  I love to meet people, and I love to drive around, go to small towns and just walk around and spend time in coffee shops.”