Casanova joined Champion Laboratories from Liberty Bell, Inc., where he was most recently vice president of sales and customer service. Prior to Liberty Bell, Casanova held varying and progressively responsible positions at Remy International, Visteon and Monroe Auto Equipment. In his role at Champion Laboratories, Casanova spearheads Champion Laboratories’ initiatives to enhance sales growth and increase brand awareness for the company’s leading filtration products worldwide – including well-known brand names such as Champ, PetroClear, Kleener and Luber-finer. Casanova received his bachelor’s degree from Northern Michigan University. In this exclusive 
John Casanova joined Champion Laboratories on April 1 as its vice president of sales and marketing.
You recently joined Champ Labs. While I’m sure you are still getting settled, tell us about your goals for the business – both immediate and long-term.
Our immediate goal will never change, and that is to be as customer-focused and driven as possible. Our future lies in the hands of our customers, and we will continue to become more creative and innovative to help them grow their business. One way in which we are doing this is through Category Management. We are able to help our customers reduce their inventories while increasing their coverage and sales. Although this concept is not new, it has typically been used in the Retail segment of the Automotive Aftermarket. We are now expanding these efforts to our valued Traditional Aftermarket customers through our sales and category management teams. That, coupled with the expanding coverage and launch of our heavy duty Luber-finer line into the light and medium duty markets should make for some exciting times this fall for our customers.
Looking forward, we will continue to enhance our world-class capabilities in both production and distribution with our state-of-the-art facilities and technologies. We are constantly looking to provide new and innovative products for our customers. We continue to work with the OEMs to help design new products and capabilities so that we can be first to market. The plan is to continue our global growth focusing on our leading brands such as Champ, Luber-finer, PetroClear and Kleener. We believe we are positioned well to accomplish our goals because of the passion, dedication and desire that all of our employees possess.
Please tell us how your previous industry experience will help you in this new role.
My 20-plus years of experience in the Automotive Aftermarket working at all levels of sales and marketing has given me the understanding of not only what the customers want, but what they need. From the field level to the executive level, I am very familiar with how our customers go to market. Although I have spent the majority of my career on the manufacturing side of the business, I have also spent time in distribution. This has allowed me to understand what is needed from both sides of the industry in order to be successful.
My responsibilities at Champion Laboratories are very broad-brushed, from enhancing the knowledge of our sales people to expanding the recognition of our brands both domestically and abroad. I’m also working closely with our operations and purchasing people creating cross-functional teams to enhance our overall business practices. I believe this is not only securing our position in the industry for today, but for years to come.
Overall, what are the company’s goals for the near future? Any plans to introduce new products or grow the business in some other way this year?
As stated earlier, we are very excited about the launch of our Luber-finer brand of heavy-duty filters into the light and medium duty markets. Our marketing group has been working diligently preparing for this launch, which will take place later this fall. Since 1936, Luber-finer has been a trusted name in heavy duty filters and we are certain that the high-efficiency performance these filters offer to the heavy duty market will also translate well to the light and medium duty markets. In addition to this expansion of the Luber-finer brand, we also continue to develop and incorporate various products into our comprehensive filter families in order to meet the needs of our customers. Of course, we are also always looking at new designs and technology that we hope will enhance the filtration business.
Champion Laboratories received quite an accolade earlier this year when it ranked No. 11 on Quality Magazine’s 2010 “Leadership 100” list. Can you tell us about the qualities that helped Champ Labs earn this recognition?
It has been very exciting joining Champion Laboratories at a time when the company received such a prestigious recognition. The company has prided itself in setting high standards in the filtration industry and will continue to lead the way into the future. I believe the recent improvements that Champion Laboratories has made in its quality-control processes played a major role in earning this high ranking. This will continue to be a primary focus for us because it’s what our customers have come to expect. This has also always been a company that values the input of its employees, which is another trait that caught the attention of Quality Magazine when it was compiling the data to determine its rankings. To sum it up, Champion Laboratories’ bedrock commitment to doing its best in research, design, manufacture and customer service, as well as an open-mindedness that lends itself to creating the best products, played prominent roles in earning Quality’s recognition.
The filtration market seems to be one of the fastest-growing categories today. What are your thoughts on the future of the filters/filtration products market, in general?
We at Champ are excited about the future as we continue to strive to differentiate ourselves from the industry by being innovative and forward-thinking. Our engineering group spends a tremendous amount of time creating and testing new designs that we believe could have a significant effect on the filtration industry. Filtration products will continue to grow as the industry sees new areas of opportunities such as the cabin air segment. This is one of the world’s fastest-growing styles of filter products and, anticipating this growth, we have positioned our Kleener brand of cabin air filters to be a leader in this market. To aid in the growth of this category, we have even created the Kleener Cabin Air Filter Training Program. This online training module gives Kleener distributors the knowledge they need to successfully sell this growing category. You can visit this program by going to http://www.champlabs.com/content/kleener-training-program.
