Manco founder Jack Kahl is known for saying what’s on his mind, but this may have been a little candid even for him.
Speaking recently before a group of young executives at the Cleveland Athletic Club, Kahl, who recently sold his majority interest in the company to a German firm, called Rubbermaid CEO Wolfgang Schmitt “a total butthead” for a series of what he considers blunders leading to the selling of Rubbermaid.
In full hypnotic Kahlian tilt, he blew well past the scheduled ending time. No one seemed to care. For the price of lunch, they got to hear a generous sprinkling of insights about the new economy along with titillating name-dropping of people the newly liquid deca-millionaire has rubbed shoulders with recently, from GE chairman Jack Welch to presidential candidate Steve Forbes (his personal favorite in the race for the White House.)
He also amused the young execs by citing a champion racehorse as being among his biggest inspirations, along with his mother and Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. “I met the actual horse in 1986,” he said of the late Triple Crown winner Secretariat, without a trace of apparent irony.
