Former travelling salesman Garry Ridge is the longest serving Australian chief of a listed US company, and it sells one of the world’s best-known products.
Garry Ridge is stepping down as the head of WD-40 after decades with the company in Australia and the US.For 25 years, until next month when he steps down as chief executive, 66-year-old Ridge has helmed a business that sells one of the most recognisable household items in the world: WD-40 , an all-in-one lubricant, degreaser and anti-corrosive. The product is regarded bymore than 2000 purposes for the product, from SpaceX rockets to removing pythons from a bus in Thailand.
“So I put the two bags on the floor and sat on the bags. And he said, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ and I said, ‘If you think that I have carried these two bags all the way here and you’re going to tell me to get out, well, I’m not leaving here until at least you look at what I have in these cases.’”
“I listen to Australian breakfast radio every day. I drive home in the afternoon when it’s morning in Australia. I love the Australian culture. I love the Australian point of view. I love the way Australians reflect on things differently to the American culture. “For example, I do get really frustrated when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do. In the early days, I would have been really in their face, and say, ‘you have no right to do that’. Back then, I was more aggressive about it. Today, I would handle it differently. Now I would be more coaching about it.”“When the board of directors decided that I should be the CEO, to lead this public company, I’d never even been to Wall Street. I didn’t understand public markets. I was scared.
“Meeting Garry for the first time was unforgettable,” Tynan recalls. “The first time I visited the old WD-40 headquarters there wasn’t even carpet on parts of the office floor!”
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