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Good morning. Today, we are in a ceramic factory Andar. Let
me you ask a few questions in realtion to CERVIVE project.
Why did you decide to open and operate your own
plant, when it was and what led you to this?
In 2006, me and my husband decided to open a ceramic
factory, we simply wanted to have something own.
We are young people. I admit that in Poland we have tried different ways to make
money, such as cultivating vegetables and flowers. Despite the fact that both me and
my wife were wroking hard, the money we had been
earning were not enough to make any savings.
We couldn't accept such a standard and that is why we decided to start own company.
I need to mention that I had been working in a ceramic
industry for ten years before. I was the first
hired employee in a company so it was me who was
running the business on behalf of the owner. I had
been working there for over 10 years, but over time, due
to deteriorating work and payment conditions and
it no longer made sense and I had quit. It was the ultimate
motivation for sarting the business by ourselves .
Nowadays, which of the family memebers has a
decisive influence on the company's development?
It's hard to say. My wife is the owner of the company..
It seems to me that both of us make decisions. Sometimes my
husband suggest something, once I agree and other time I don't.
How many family members are involved in the company's activities?
Mainly my wife
- I'm just helping her because I deal with agriculture and do not have much free time left.
Children help us especially during the summer months,
as they are studying. We do everything together.
Could you please tell me about the problems encountered in running
your business, if there were any and how did you deal with them?
In general, you have to be persistent and even a bit stubborn person.
Problems will always be there.
Starting with the bureaucracy and even in terms of cooperation with other manufacturers.
We received no supprot from our cooperants neither public adminstration.
Maybe excepting collaboration with other small plants.
This cooperation works well and we help each other.
But this kind of relations refers only to small cooperants,
like our company. Those which hire only few emplyees.
Ms. Anita, could you please tell us a little bit
more about methods you apply to solve problems?
In fact, we had some problems with producers of one of the semi products that we
uses (biscuit) in the production process. These suppliers
were unreliable and did not execute our orders
at the agreed time so we had problems with fulfilling orders in time.
Therefore we decided to open own molding department and produce
the semi by ourselves. Eventually we became independent from these supplieres.
Did you succeed?
Yes, now we produce the semi by ourselves.
Was it difficult? How long did it take to get the proper control of the process?
That was the whole process that we had to learn step by step.
First, we had to figure out how to make molds,
as we had no idea how to do it. We had to get the
mother form first and to create later working forms. In the
beginning we ended up with only few wroking forms. Later on we bought
a large number of interesting shapes and forms of
tableware from big porcelain factory, which was shut down. By now, we
have collected over 300 shapes that we can produce by ourselves.
In the end, the described situation with unreliable suppliers of components
helped us to become independent from external sources.
Now we are always able to fulfill orders from our customers in time.
That's how we turned a threat into our strength.
Did anyone help you in starting the molding departmenet
or you have copleted the whole process by yourselves?
We hired a modeler who showed us how to make forms. He produced
some of first working forms with assistance of my husband.
In this way my husband gained the required knowledge
and now he is able to prepare forms by himself.
Did you suffer any defeat, which seems to be important
from today's perspective, something you did not expect?
Hopefully we haven't had such cases.
There are minor problems that result from the daily production of ceramics,
but no serious incidents have happened yet, and may never happen.
Do you remeber any situations in which you would have
act differently if you had your present knowledge?
Maybe we wouldn't wait that long with opening our own business.
However, I must emphasize that prior you open
the facility you need to have a relevant funds.
We opened the plant in 2006, but we have thought of this solution already in the 90s.
But then there were other regulations and obstacles to overcome.
Large expenses were needed for bulding missing infrastructure such as power supply,
a new electricity transformer - we were not able to afford it.
Your company is a family owned business. What would you say differs yours company
from others? What are the strengths and and weaknesses?
Family businesses have their own unique atmosphere. They are run by the
family members, which take care of all equipment, apparatus, every
slightest thing. Each of produced goods has a quality check, whereas
contractual employees often pay less attention to such things.
Where do you place your company on the market, in relation to competitors?
There are several powerful ceramic factories and a
number of smaller, such as ours. We cannot compare
ourselves to the largest, but only to a small once.
We aim to differentiate our design and attract
loyal customers with style of products. Customers believe that our products
are unique and this is the reason they buy from us.
We stick to it and avoid counterfeiting models from other plants, hence our unique design.
So you take care of your company's image.. Can you tell me if you
have any plans for the future and who is responsible for them?
Plans.. We want to conduct our business as before. In our country, it
is difficult to make long distance plans and decisions
about the expansion of the plant, mainly because it is
very difficult to find and recruit highly skilled workers.
You're still young, but did you think already about successor? Maybe
your son would be interested in continuing the work of his parents?
We don't known yet. Our son is studying production engineering so our friends
joke that the successor is growing, but so far we can't say what will
happen in a year or two. If one day our son will say that he takes over the
company, we will be happy and will help him.. because we love what we do.