Robert E. Stutz, Managing Director,

has extensive management and leadership experience, having served at the CEO/President level for three firms. Mr. Stutz has extensive experience in a wide variety of industries, including packaging, highway safety, automotive parts, automotive OEM, electrical and electronic components and systems, and consumer hand tools.



Most recently, Mr. Stutz was President of Label Makers, Inc., a privately owned flexible packaging manufacturer. Prior to that, he was CEO of Stimsonite, Inc., a $100-million NASDAQ-listed manufacturer of highway safety devices, where he led the effort to sell the company to Avery Dennison after having tripled profits over a three-year period. He has also held executive positions at General Electric, General Motors, Cooper Industries and Cherry Corp.

Mr. Stutz has conducted business in Asia, with a particular emphasis in China, for more than 20 years. In the 1980's, he established a region-wide network that included sales representatives and offices in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and China, to assist customers as they moved their product-assembly operations from North America to Asia.

In the early 1990's, as General Manager of Cherry's Automotive Group, he opened a Tokyo-based sales and engineering office to support activities with the Japanese-based automotive OEM's. Cherry was an early advocate of worldwide sourcing and, through the efforts of Mr. Stutz, the company's products were selected for the first Buicks built by General Motors in mainland China.

Later, as CEO of the highway safety products manufacturer, Stimsonite, Mr. Stutz sponsored the opening of the company's Beijing sales office, negotiated two exclusive-distributor agreements, helped establish national specifications with government agencies, and drove the national approval of the company's reflective pavement markers and sign-sheeting materials. During this period, sales to China grew 350%. After the acquisition of Stimsonite by Avery Dennison, he assisted in the development of a manufacturing and marketing strategy of Stimsonite's products through the Avery infrastructure, which included the building of a new embossing/laminating plant in Shanghai to manufacture reflective films.

Mr. Stutz has a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in Engineering. He enjoys sports cars, travel and gardening.

He is registered securities agent and holds Series 62, 79 and 63 licenses.