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Two hundred thousand. That's the number of restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that the institutional division of Ecolab sells cleaning and sanitary products to. It's also the number of customers that the division's top competitor, Diversey, intends to steal. And Diversey has a better shot than most Ecolab competitors. Leading the charge are six former Ecolab principals with long customer lists.
"They have a fifty percent market share and we're going after it. It's the first time they've had a real competitor in North America," asserts Ron Heagle, one of the six principals who left Ecolab in 1993 to form a business partnership with Diversey.
Counter assault is Jim McCarty's job. McCarty is the senior vice president of Ecolab's institutional division for North America, who had worked with Heagle at Ecolab for close to 20 years. His division is responsible for $579 million of Ecolab Inc.'s $1.2 billion in annual sales. (Ecolab's five other U.S. divisions include Pest Elimination and Janitorial, which sell pest elimination products and detergents to such clients as hotels and schools). McCarty is now leading the customer...