The founder of Best, Tomáš Březina, sold his company after 30 years. The new owner of the concrete paving manufacturer is DEK billionaire Vít Kutnar’s building materials. Although the agreement has yet to be approved by the Office for the Protection of Competition, the sale, which is estimated to be in the order of billions of crowns, should be completed within a few weeks.
Before that happens, Tomáš Březina told Forbes what his last year was like as the owner of Best.
“The pandemic brought a lot of challenges, but it was definitely not my hardest year in business. Building a manufacturing company is in itself much more challenging. Today, young boys and girls sit down at a computer and make billions by sitting at their laptops. But building a factory from scratch is just a massacre, “says Březina.
He was said to have heard stories of the Spanish flu from his grandmother, but he could not have imagined that he would encounter anything similar in his life. “As a child, it just felt like a story. And suddenly we have something in this way, although not so tragic, but still affecting the lives of each of us, “he thinks of the historical parallel Březina.
The first wave of the pandemic also hit Best hard. Its founder therefore immediately embarked on a restructuring. He started looking for savings in the operation of the company, said goodbye to some of the employees and agreed with the banks to defer payments.
“We did not wait for the government to start talking about compensation and relief. But we tried to take care of ourselves. Fortune favors the prepared. And it’s better to go through the problems than to sweep them under the rug, “says the 64-year-old businessman.
Throughout the thirty years of his business, he has been guided by the premise of being open to everything. “We stand in front of employees and tell them things hard. It’s better than government populism. And so we told them in March that we had to touch on wages in time. But we are fair, so it applied to everyone, including me. And when it turned out that our crisis scenarios did not materialize, we paid everything to the employees in two months. At the end of the year, we even paid annual rewards, “describes Březina.
As part of the savings, the company also narrowed the number of cooperating agencies and companies and began to deal with many external services on its own, typically security services. On a daily basis, new decisions were made on how to streamline the company’s operations. “It’s an ongoing process, of course, but the brutal experience with covid has shown that it’s still possible to do it differently and better. And she accelerated some decisions, “says Březina.
One of the areas that the company strengthened was digitization. For example, it has significantly invested in improving its e-shop. “Although I’m not the youngest, I’ve always thought young about this and tried to digitize the company as the old economy can handle. Of course, it is easier to buy a croissant or a book on the e-shop than equipment for terraces or gardens, but even that our customers eventually learned to choose via the Internet, “says the entrepreneur.
However, online still represents only a small part of sales, last year it was goods worth around one hundred million crowns. As much as 90 percent of the company’s sales are sold through retail chains, from local building materials to large players such as DEK, which has become the new owner of Best.
“It helped us that large chains could be open and that our products – albeit to a lesser extent – were still taking over. On the other hand, of course, we were touched by the fact that most of the year our own company stores, which we have on the premises of our eight factories, were closed. Fortunately, they are two-component and the store also includes an outdoor showroom, where people could go to the dispensing window, “describes Březina.
During the year, it turned out that the catastrophic scenarios from the spring would not come true. During the lockdown, the Czechs closed themselves at home and in their cottages and gardens. And they began to beautify them. Demand for paving and other concrete elements that Best produces has begun to rise.
Finally, in 2020, the company’s turnover increased by one hundred million crowns to 1.5 billion year-on-year. Operating profit EBITDA last year exceeded 300 million crowns.
Although it is a manufacturing company, a large part of its roughly five hundred employees were at home office during the pandemic.
“Best is a modern manufacturing company. A factory as big as a football field is operated by four people. We sent office workers home to eliminate the risk of infection. For me, it is a short-term solution, working from home in slippers and curlers for a long time is, in my opinion, nonsense. People need to meet and the lack of contact in our company has had a negative effect, “says Březina.
When he has to evaluate the last year as a whole, he says: “I think we managed the massacre very well and almost exemplaryly.” But now he is preparing for a new stage of life. “I deal with my life after life,” he comments with a laugh, the great changes that await him.
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