Seymour Midwest Announces Vitoux’s Promotion
WARSAW — Seymour Midwest, a family owned global supplier to the specialty hand tools market, is pleased to announce the promotion of Bob Vitoux to the role of president and chief executive officer. Vitoux joined Seymour Midwest in 2016 as the chief operating officer and will take over for Bill Henthorn who will move into a Board role after twenty years with the company and having been in the role Vitoux will assume.
During Vitoux’s first year, he led the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and personally engaged in activities focused on teamwork and communication to strengthen the organizational alignment across the Company’s five operating locations while also overseeing several significant customer facing initiatives. These initiatives included a complete visual rebranding of the Company’s brands and a significant market pricing undertaking, as well as two significant new product development initiatives: first, a new partnership for striking tools and second, licensing the IP for a ground breaking new product innovation that is positioned to expand the Company’s already high market share in the epoxy coatings market.
“This first year has been a whirlwind of activity for everyone inside the business, but I’m thrilled with the foundation we’ve been able to build as a Team both internally and externally for 2018 and beyond – we’ve set the stage to continue to expand our business over the coming years through our relentless pursuit of customer focused initiatives” said Vitoux.
Vitoux’s career includes public accounting, automotive and orthopedic experience as well as serving in general management and as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Steinway Musical Instruments. During his orthopedic career, Vitoux managed increasingly larger teams at Zimmer, DePuy and Biomet culminating with his role as vice president of commercial operations at Biomet. Vitoux’s career also includes managing HR, IT, and procurement as Division CFO for SPX-Power Team and he was the controller and director of sales for Dalton Corporation of Warsaw.
A graduate of Manchester College, Vitoux and his wife of 30 years, Debbie, reside in Winona Lake and have two children, Austin and Ashlyn. Vitoux currently serves as Vice Chairman for the Board of Trustees of Grace College and is active in the Warsaw/Winona Lake community and his church.