| Success stories
It's chemistry. Teplice family company that sets the direction in its field
Platinn mentoring program, provided by the Innovation Center of the Ústí Region, helps established companies gain an external view of their activities. This view comes from an unbiased expert, whom the company chooses on the basis of defining its own needs. For some participants, it is also a form of therapy for their business, where they can openly discuss their concerns with the mentor and look for new opportunities. The program is divided into three phases, with the first phase, including 40 hours of mentoring, being completely free for companies. After that, companies can either end the mentoring or continue to the next stages with partial funding. In nine out of ten cases in the Platinn program, the company decides to continue to the next stages. Why? Because there is always room for improvement and the companies themselves appreciate the contribution of an external consultant for business development!
From floor to ceiling
The Teplice company CHEMSTR – ŠAFAŘÍK was founded in 2008 by Luděk Šafařík Sr. Among other things, he was largely involved in the direction of the whole industry of technical sprays and liquids in the Czech Republic. Among the company's products you will find cleaning agents, adhesives, sealants, lubricants, oils and many other products that can be used in industry. CHEMSTR with thatE divided into several divisions – chemical, technological and construction. It means that in Teplice they are able to produce the products themselves for e.g. industrial floor cleaning, design the necessary single-purpose machine directly to measure and, if necessary, even reconstruct the given floors. As the current director of the company, Luděk Šafařík Jr., says: “For new opportunities and sometimes even for the survival of the company, we branched out in many directions. But now it's changing, and instead of going wide, we want to go deep."
There was no time to think about taking over the company
As the name of the company, the name of the founder and now the name of its director and executive show, CHEMSTR – ŠAFAŘÍK is a family business. The father founded and the son took over and now manages and develops. Are you waiting for some advice on how to manage this family, and also generational change of management? "I took over the company in a crisis. This was caused by my father's health condition and several other adverse influences, which, as is often the case, came together at one moment. It was such a fast and dynamic period that there was honestly no time to think about whether it was a good or bad idea. In short, we had to start working hard and put the company back on a stable footing." Luděk Šafařík Jr. comments on the period of taking over the company.
Ego aside because it won't help anything
Platinn's mentoring program is specific in that, in essence, you bring an outsider into the company who knows the issue you are most passionate about. This can be a very vulnerable feeling for some entrepreneurs. "It is important to have an open mind before starting the mentoring. Otherwise, all the energy invested in change is useless. It helped me to put my ego aside, but also to tell myself that not everything a mentor says is dogma. Thanks to this, I was ready to calmly hear that we were doing certain steps wrong, possibly we looked at them from multiple points of view," Luděk Šafařík Jr. describes the progress of the Platinn program.
Established CRM business system, new processes, set KPIs for the sales department, experience sharing system across the company, onboarding of new employees, standardization of processes across departments. These are all changes that they implemented together with their Platinn mentor. "An outside view of our problems through the eyes of a subject matter expert was great. Overall, Platinn saved us a lot of time and energy. The program is suitable to be used when you have the capacity to change and move things." Luděk describes the entire collaboration.
Article published thanks to the Smart accelerator project for the Ústí Region III, registration number CZ.02.01.02/00/22_009/0004316.
