The entrepreneurship is still not well defined. We can say it consists of 3 main components: innovativeness, risk-taking, and pro-activeness. I would like to introduce two successful entrepreneurs Donald Trump & Robert Kiyosaki and their point of view on the topic.
First case I would like to describe is an online auction and a shopping website allegro.pl. It was created in 1999. We could say it was patterned after worldwide Ebay. Although Ebay was available on polish market, it wasn’t popular enough. This created an opportunity which was well taken by two open-minded entrepreneurs Arjan Bakker and Tomasz Dudziak.
They started their business in a small basement. As there was no other website like that, they were able to develop the network of clients. More customers meant the greater range of goods that can be bought there. That led to a competitive advantage. No fees at the beginning of existence and low costs of delivery made allegro.pl competitive to Ebay in UK or US.
The second case is an hypertonic drink called ‘Tiger’. It was brought to the market in 2003 by Foodcare Sp. z o.o. At that time ‘Redbull’ was already a quite recognisable brand. However, the entrepreneurs noticed that its price was high considering average incomes in Poland. Setting price of Tiger slightly higher than its marginal cost allowed to create a competitive advantage and to catch a significant market share. Its price, three or four times lower than the price of the main competitor, attracted also the big group of students that started to use the energy drink as a substitution of coffee.
I love to hear business success stories especially, Polish ones as I am a patriot! Please share the stories you know, maybe it is your own story
Polish successes (especially international) always send my flying! To your list I would like to add INGLOT Cosmetic. It was founded in 1983 in Przemyśl. In 2006 company opened its first store abroad, in Montreal, Canada. Now INGLOT owns about 400 retail stores in more than 50 countries. I think that a capstone of company’s success was an opening of their boutique in Manhattan. This is probably the only Polish brand in such prestigious location!
ReplyDeletePolish companies are successful in many different areas. I think it is worth adding to those already mentioned - 3 companies - that stand out in the markets of Europe and the world too.
ReplyDelete1. Europe's leading manufacturer of windows - Drutex is focused on international expansion. Outside Europe, the company sells its products in the USA, Australia and Mexico. The window from Drutex have been installed at the New York Hilton. The company received the title of Ambassador of the Polish Economy in the category "European brand" as a company that promotes Polish brand in international markets, in a competition organized by the Business Centre Club. http://www.drutex.pl/en/about-us/history.html
2. Second, existing since 1983 in the Polish cosmetics market company, which enjoys great popularity and reputation, which I would describe is the Cosmetic Laboratories Dr Irena Eris. Number of staff members which at the inception of the company amounted to 1, now stands at 800. Every month, manufacturing plants leaving more than 200 million pieces of high quality products, purchased in more than 40 countries (among which the largest recipient of are the United States, Lithuania, Russia and the United Kingdom). The distribution network includes cosmetic stores, pharmacies, supermarkets and beauty salons. That’s very impressive, indeed. http://drirenaeris.com/en/
3. And the third company that I want to describe is Polish fashion retailer LPP SA in Gdansk. This one has created and introduced to foreign markets brands such as Reserved, House, MOHITO, Esotiq or CroppTown. The company was founded in the early 90s. First Reserved store was opened in Poland in 2000, and two years later, the brand has entered into foreign markets, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia. In subsequent years, premiered at the Russian market had CroppTown and Esotiq in Romania. Today LPP SA is a retail network, which includes a total of 310 stores overseas, Reserved, House and CroppTown in 10 European countries. If somebody want to read more: http://www.lppsa.com/company/history
Dr Irena Eris! It is amazing how popular they are in... Asia. I don't know if it is possible to buy them in Asia but every woman I know from Asia who had a chance to try Eris cosmetics is completely in love! I work for Korean company and sometimes we're going for business trips to HQ. There are two things we always have to takie with us: a bottle of Żubrówka and Eris cosmetics. Sometimes we feel like a smugglers and it is not because of vodka...
DeleteFrom my company we are sending packages with documents from one office to another. In our Warsaw office we are often asked for a sweet attachment ;) People around the wold like Wedel Chocolates.
DeleteStories are nice, but none of them is going to make you the one with "midas touch". Nonetheless one day I'd like to have this exceptional super-power ;)
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to succeding ventures I can think of one from kickstarter. A few guys with different areas of specialization gathered and launched Kickstarter project which was funded almost immediately and gained over 400k dollars until funding deadline, out of 100k which were needed to start it off. Now they are going to create sleeping mask which will schedule your sleep to get most from it. I've read that this just might not work according to some scientific researches, but what if? This "what if" made successful yet another Polish entrepreneur.
Well, yada yada yada. We are awesome, we have successful companies. Sure... sure... one in a million. That's how many of them are successful. Now let's look at this matter from a bigger perspective. County perspective. We're loosing market share and market importance. Our biggest companies are loosing shares (privatization) to foreign investors or to our own stupidity (every single shipyard in Poland, manufacturing plants, LOT airlanes). So yeah we have couple of success stories, but most of what we do is basically c***. Hopefuly it changes soon or we're going to work on someone else's success.
ReplyDeletePlease, do not call selling our our national businesses, OUR stupidity :) These are THEM guys at the steering wheel now, who did not have slightest idea on how to turn those companies around to become profitable for our country. We have some great experts in all industry areas, but the politicians are too stupid to involve them to participate in the decision partaking process. Or the experts do not want to mix up with politicians. I would lean more onto the latter, after hearing their opinions, reading articles about how time-and-resource-wasting is cooperation with Polish government institutions.
DeleteI was working an a company called Infosystems. They are not so famous, because they work in niche (IT systems for Printing Industry), but they are quite successful... First of all know how to use marketing tools: they are present in almost any communication channel popular in the industry, take part in fairs, conferences etc. They also know how to find other funding sources like: stock investors or more frequently available and less costly European Union donations... And they use the money very wisely – mainly for research, development and acquisitions of other companies.
ReplyDeleteIt was a small company that grew fast and is still successful and on the market. From my perspective it’s a bookish example of how to run a company. They are not so bookish about human resources management – but maybe you can’t be perfect in all areas.. ;)
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ReplyDeleteBesides all the companies aleready named (INGLOT, Dr Irena Eris and LPP) about which I’ve already known, I would like to write about 3 polish companies and 2 (modern!) inventions:
ReplyDelete- As a very big fan of Calcio I had to write about OKNOPLAST. This company established in 1994 in Kraków, which manufactures not only as name tells manufactures windows and window components, but other wooden and aluminium products as well (doors, roller, shutters, etc.) Nowadays it has has many show rooms in Germany, Italy, Austria, France and the rest of the Europe. Why I referred to Itlaian Football at the beginning? Oknoplast is one of the main sponsors of F.C. Internazionale (or Inter Milan for those who aren’t familiar with the original name) since 2012. What might be interesting (for football fans I presume) is that they had to decide between AC Milan, FC Internazionale and Juventus FC (THERE IS NOT SUCH THING AS JUVENTUS TURIN!!). Looking now at the Italian Serie A table I think they should have chosen Juventus
http://www.archispace.pl/public/uploaded/141/image/CSC_1601.jpg
http://intermediolan.com/img/sections/oknoplast-inter.jpg
- as a local patriot I have to write about PESA (Pojazdy Szynowe Pesa Bydgoszcz) – it’s not very big multiinternational company, but since 2006 they’ve signed many contracts with Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany and Russia. They’re more famous in Poland ( do you recognize those: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/PESA_120Na-Warsaw001.jpg ?), but I hope that their trams with become more known worldwide
- last, but not least, I have to write about the company I have privilege and honour to work for – CD Projekt RED (and GOG.COM as well). I don’t think that I need to introduce RED to anyone, just to be sure I’ll share a link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqQ3LeBgGDM&list=PLa23C9cgXXk0MczCBYTMu_4jVxvtWM335). GOG.com is owned by CD Projekt company and it sells older video games for compatible prices (from about $5 to $10) and newer ad well – all fully digital.
- I won’t go into details, but we should be proud that polish scientists had very great impact in blue laser technology used in every Blu-ray device (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laser) and grapheme research (http://phys.org/news/2011-04-team-material-graphene.html)
Speaking about Pesa - their international success is really impressing. They provide vehicles to a lot of European countries and for our Polish market. Recently they have signed a contract with PKP Intercity for 20 quite fast and modern trains:
Deletehttp://www.railjournal.com/index.php/rolling-stock/pkp-intercity-orders-20-dart-emus-from-pesa.html
Interesting examples, especially those in comments. Although, it needs to be said, polish economy is still pretty much service oriented (at least I can say for IT sector). We can name few very successful companies in this field: Comarch, Accenture, Capgemini or Luxoft. Yes, those are not purely polish companies, but if you think how many talented and skilled polish people work in those companies you can imagine how many new and successful startups those people could have created.
ReplyDeleteWhy then we don't see a startup boom in Poland ?
Few reasons come to my mind:
1. There are enough money and opportunities in outsourcing (service) industry
2. Entrepreneurship is not enough supported and encouraged by government and investors
3. Education system tuned to produce specialists not entrepreneurs
To finish on a bright spot, examples of success in this post just confirms one universal truth: one who tries - gives himself a chance.
Actually, within IT sector, there are a lot of >success< startups - and I personally know person who funded/helped with a lot of them, connected directly with Android (he is even still a student @pjwstk ;)
DeleteI am astonished to learn that nobody has yet mentioned Solaris Bus! I suppose all of you have heard a lot of success stories of it..
ReplyDeleteTo be honest - I am pretty sure that Poland has enourmous potential within new technologies - although we are still too afraid to "make a show" and we are not... well... familiar with selling and advertising stuff.
Interesting topic. In our market there are many corporations, Polish and international. Parts of the rest either goes bankrupt or is bought up by other companies. In my opinion, the success of your business depends of the idea and happiness. And as for Polish companies:
ReplyDeleteNiwea - for many years big cossmetic Polish company now bought out by a larger international company.
Polish mines - closed or bought by foreign companies and the coal imported from Russia. why do we do not modernize mines? we would have own coal
Being successful is always something to be proud for. And being successful in Poland (successful as making millions) is a fantastic feat. There's so much shitty laws in our loved country that I can completely understand people going abroad only to create their own company. If you don't have fantastic idea and plan and big starting budget you have to build your company slowly. And the beginning is just harsh for polish. Hope it will get better soon.
ReplyDeleteOne day I will be... I will have... I will do ... etc etc. Of course there are many great entrepreneurs in Poland, but none of these people really inspires me, it's because behind each one of them stands some bad story, problems with law and stuff. Because polish entrepreneurs didn't do a "clear" business which really created something inspiring. On the other hand I know they started in 90s in Poland so... not easy job to do :-)) Anyway I am neutral with this topic
ReplyDeleteI smiled when I saw the topic of this week's presentation, as I've been to Budapest as well and I have very nice memories related to that place. Firstly, the city is beatiful and its architecture is really impressing. Secondly, I liked the climate of the city. I haven't seen the hustle and bustle I see every day in Warsaw. I had the impression that their time passes more slowly. However, what impressed me most and what I would like to recommend to every person paying a visit to Budapest is the Jewish district with many pubs and bars. The ones worth visiting are the ruin bars. You can read more about them here:
ReplyDeletehttp://ruinpubs.com/
The most popular is Simpla Kert - a huge bar located in a ruined building (probably after a bomb explosion). The prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is quuite cool and the place has its own unique climate. There are several similar ruin bars in the district and I've been to almost all of them. I really regret we don't have such bars in Warsaw. I think a great Warsaw district for such pubs would be Praga. Unfortunatelly, I haven't heard of any places of this kind in Poland.
Quite a nice and optimistic topic for a presentation. :-) I think we often underestimate the achievements of our Polish companies.
ReplyDeleteRecently I've heard about a company from Olsztyn (my hometown) that has sold 5000 3D printers to Dell. You can read more about it here:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/22/polish-3d-printer-zortrax-sells-5000-units-to-dell/
I keep my fingers crossed for them and I'm very glad that medium companies can achieve such success on a large scale.
In this topic I would like to mention about the huge Polish discovery which is mass production of graphene. We already have many types of usage of graphene in many areas of life. If Poland employs this discovery, we will achieve a big success. I support and wish luck all Poles who are responsible for this project.
ReplyDeleteYes the graphene discovery was a groundbreaking one, I didn't mentioned it because it's more scientific discovery than entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, I’ll surely be a huge commercial success because it has many production properties
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