Pedro Baranda is a soccer fan and he calls it a "great win," but he's not talking about a last-minute goal that ignited a crowd and won a championship. Otis Elevator's president is referring to the company's contract to install 21 energy-efficient elevators and escalators at Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium, the site of both the 2014 FIFA World Cup championship match and the 2016 Summer Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies.
The contract is one of a string of high-profile projects that Otis has won recently. Perhaps none was more significant to the company than its contract to refurbish and modernize the 68 elevators in the Empire State Building. Otis designed and installed the original elevator system 80 years ago. Those elevators transport 10 million tenants and visitors each year up and down the 1,454-foot skyscraper. The new elevators will cut energy usage as much as 30%.
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Baranda attributes these wins to "customer proximity, talking to our customers and the energy efficiency of our equipment." While none of these highly competitive projects are huge in terms of Otis' overall revenue, he notes, they are very significant from the standpoint of brand recognition. But he says Otis, the global leader with more than 17% of the market, is successful because it does "a lot of small things right."
Along with installing its latest products, Otis also won a 10-year maintenance contract at the Empire State Building. And that points to a key strength of the company. More than half of Otis's nearly $13 billion in annual revenue comes from servicing more than 1.7 million elevators around the world. Otis employs 60,000 people, 53,000 of whom work outside the United States.
