Jarro F. Kaplan, a Goodyear employee since 1986, is already in his second year as President Eastern Europe and is responsible for the region that includes Eastern Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East as well as some other countries in Asia. Before that he was General Manager Deutsche Goodyear in Cologne for two years and earlier in his career he held General Manager positions in the UK and Turkey. The region he is now responsible for is – measured by turnover – relatively small, but is becoming increasingly important due to the fact that the group is running highly competitive factories in Poland, Slovenia and Turkey. The income of the workers in those countries is not comparable with that of countries in Western Europe and will not become so for the next decade.

The biggest factory within the production network of the Goodyear Group in the whole of Europe is the Polish factory in Debica. The production is focused on passenger car tyres, mostly S/T rated. The Debica brand dominates, but many Fulda tyres are also produced there. And the Goodyear brand? “Not yet” says Kaplan. Debica has a production capacity of 40,000 tyres a day and there are already concrete plans drawn up to expand this. Plus it should not be forgotten that the Debica factory also produces some agricultural tyres as well as commercial tyres.

South Africa also belongs to Kaplan’s “Empire”. Goodyear has a big factory there and also its own equity with about 150 outlets, plus it is building and expanding a franchise-system.

Starting from South Africa, Goodyear is interested in doing more business in countries like Botswana, Sierra Leone, Kenya and some other countries. The company’s own equity in South Africa is doing a good job delivering tyres in the shortest possible time to customers. But it is absolutely clear that in the long run Goodyear must have its own people in those countries on which the company can rely; it can no longer leave everything in the hands of distributors. Kaplan: “You need to have your own people on the ground.”

Kaplan is travelling much more. For example to Dubai; from here Goodyear is defending its interests in countries like Israel as well as Palestine, in Iraq, Iran and so on. He travels to the north of Africa as well as to Pakistan. Pakistan belongs to his region. He who knows world politics can imagine that it might be impossible to bring India and Pakistan together under the one umbrella of Goodyear Asia.

To summarise: The Eastern Region is active in 95 different countries, with 52 different languages, which forces all managers to be sensitive and to respect the varied cultures.