Jake Kulp - Biography
7325 East Redbird Road, Scottsdale, Arizona 85266 |321-427-9216 | jkulp@cox.net
Jake Kulp has almost 40 years of experience working for both publicly traded and private companies. Two of the private companies were majority owned by private equity companies and one was family owned. He has been involved in a Fortune 500 company and three turnaround business models. Jake has orchestrated the corporate strategy and then executed it for three companies and has re-branded two.
Much of his career has been centered in the electronics manufacturing market focusing in niche markets such as aerospace, defense, medical and the high power industrial marketplace. He is a practitioner of consultative sales and marketing techniques focusing on the long-term fit between his company and the prospect’s. Mr. Kulp has re-engineered two large (15 - 85 direct employees) and two smaller (less than ten) business development teams, established all MARCOM material for four companies, lead the website development for two companies, and been involved in both the sales and buy side on the merger and acquisition processes.
While working for a multibillion-dollar company, Mr. Kulp rose rapidly through the sales / marketing ranks and was awarded Amp’s “Man of the Year” sales award. Propelling him into corporate marketing management, he then won “Marketing Manager of the Year” and was given his first sales management opportunity in the aerospace/defense marketplace. Integrating three acquisitions into the Amp culture and managing the direct salesforce in the southeast, it was in this time of mergers that he began his work with manufacturer reps as well as a direct sales force. Promoted into one of four regional Director positions in the US, he turned an under-performing territory in the mid-west into a perennially growth leader. Jake negotiated a change of control package when Tyco bought Amp for $12.22 billion.
Seeking more complex and challenging projects, Mr. Kulp pursued a career opportunity with a small ($70mm) Chicago based metal fabrication and stamping company, in leu of accepting an offer to become the VP of Sales / Marketing from ITT Cannon. The Chicago company was a complete operational and financial turn-around as FlexTek was defaulting EBITDA covenants, losing money, focusing on low margin industries and experiencing declining sales. This experience showcased Jake’s problem solving and strategic decision-making capabilities enabling the preservation of a very fragile business operation. Mr. Kulp re-engineered the small Chicago based direct sales force to a complete manufacturer rep sales force across much of the country. He grew the company’s top line, diversified the customer mix into more profitable businesses, and spearheaded the management of the AR issues that plagued this business. He was an integral part of the executive team that kept the business alive and eventually sold it to multiple investors.
Jake was recruited by Korn Ferry to join a vertically integrated EMS company in Phoenix Arizona, they eventually branded as Suntron Incorporated. The turn-around of this $500M public company providing complex, high mix manufacturing and engineering solutions to OEM leaders in aerospace, defense, capital equipment, industrial and medical electronics; involved many challenges. He was responsible for 12 manufacturing sites in North America and Mexico, all engaged in designing and producing mission critical equipment. Kulp rebranded the company that was initially built on acquisitions and integrated five different direct selling organizations into a single homogeneous sales team. He achieved a dramatic reversal of corporate losses by restructuring a talented, completely new sales team that quickly established key metrics for actionable reporting, overhauled the company’s marketing activity, and reset the companies value proposition in the highly competitive EMS marketplace. A carefully crafted strategy and focused execution of the new business development strategy led to significantly improved financial performance and top line growth. Jake was part of the team that returned company to profitability with leading EMS industry ROIC of 13.6% (2001) and profitably restructured the company while winning $150M+ in new business.
Having elevated Suntron to significantly greater profitability, Mr. Kulp was ready for new challenges and joined another EMS company, MC Assembly. MC was a family owned undercapitalized company with little business process or financial discipline. With a new CEO, both were brought into the business to assist a private equity company to buy the family out and engineer a turn-around. Like Suntron, Jake rebranded the company and created a hybrid sales force of regionally based direct business development professionals combined with a massive manufacturer rep organization spread across the US and Mexico. Drawing on his past 27 years of positive experiences, he identified new niche markets for the company to focus their new business development efforts. Kulp defined and then directed the company to become certified to new ISO quality standards that are uniquely required to participate in the new strategic niches. This also required a company rebranding, all new MARCOM materials and customer acquisition activity, while creating value propositions specific to each of the niche markets including aerospace, defense, high power industrial and medical. The results were extremely positive moving from negative EBITDA to double digit and growing from $160mm to $230mm in revenue in under four years.
Jake’s most recent endeavor before founding his consulting company was with a family owned business involved in the highly specialized niche market of personal injury attorney marketing. The founder had sold three outside memberships in 15 years and Mr. Kulp increased that membership by 300% in six months. He also negotiated options for six other memberships in 2017. He accomplished this by re-engineering the corporate value proposition, identifying and networking with industry influencers, engaging in public speaking activities across the country, participating in trade shows, creating drip e-mail campaigns, launching an eBook, and focus all sales efforts to firms that fit the ideal prospect profile. He also conducted a formal 2-day SWOT analysis with the leadership team so the owners could make the appropriate operational
changes and investments needed to manage the exceptional top-line growth they were unaccustomed to planning and managing.
Jake launched his own business, JHK Technical Solutions, LLC; in January of 2018. His primary focus is to assist small to medium size companies with new product launches, assist sourcing / outsourcing decisions, jump start their business development organizations, defined differentiated value propositions, galvanize a company’s situational awareness and focus through facilitating SWOT analysis, focus companies on more robust marketing efforts that differentiate their firm from their competition, work with original equipment organizations on their new product introductions to optimize the products full lifecycle, and to reorganize the program management / customer focused team organizations in manufacturing services companies.