Everyone broke and left with half their wages, the boss tells about saving the factory – Seznam Zprávy

Twenty-eight-year-old Nikol Doležalová had no business experience. He actually took over Emitex last year by accident. As a mother of two, she was very familiar with children’s products, a family friend approached her with an offer to help in a failing stroller clothing factory. However, it wasn’t long before her role at Emitex was much bigger than she could have imagined.

“I was supposed to have a minority share, he was supposed to be the owner. Unfortunately, he tragically died in a car accident a week before signing the contracts. But I fell in love with the brand in the meantime. I would be sad if this Czech handmade production disappeared,” Doležalová reports in an interview for SZ Byznys.

Perhaps out of naivety, as she admits in an interview with SZ Byznys, she did not return. And she took over the production plant in Ostrava and her 18 employees “on her shirt” and with that an annual loss of around two million crowns. The company was suspended. “When I took over the company, taxes and VAT were not paid for two months, the company owed hundreds of thousands with suppliers who no longer wanted to cooperate.”

“The previous owner was going overboard as it came online,” says the new head of Emitex. Even the pandemic did not benefit the fusak factory, and it ended in bankruptcy. It was not no money in the company, while production was churning out products that no one wanted, warehouses were filling up. The company was losing the name it was known for, they didn’t send a -never a penny involved in advertising. But most importantly – the company had no “money”.

For the company’s 32nd birthday, Doležalová launched a major campaign “Save Emitex”. “It was a 32 percent discount on the entire e-store. “In ten days, we got some money into the company, we sold three quarters of the warehouses,” said the owner. From eight orders a day, thanks to the initiative, it became up to 250 over night and the first money went in.

The new head of marketing saved through various small changes. “I started to find out what we were paying. Let me give you an example: We had 19 containers per month for material waste. At the same time, we donate most of the material waste to charity. I left only two, and after four months I found out that no one misses the 17,” says Doležalová, adding that the money saved goes, for example, to marketing.

From the beginning, the company was in such a bad situation that Nikol Doležalová had to appear in front of the seamstresses and ask them to reduce their working hours, and therefore their wages: “The whole team went down and everyone went to work to relieve the company at least for a month. The whole team knows that we are saving the company, I will not meet anyone “press me that the salary must be increased. But when the company is doing well, people always get extra money,” he said.

The new owner turned the business upside down. As she discovered that the products were sold at a loss during Emitex’s existence, the business plan was reworked and product prices were recalculated. She launched a new e-shop. In addition to the traditional winter collection, she presented products for the summer. From a huge loss, the company gradually came to about zero, with about ten million debts left to pay.

Emitex currently has a monthly turnover of 1.3 million. It needs about 16 million a year to be able to work and pay it off. “In the future, in two or three years, we would need 25 to 30 million, but it is a ceiling for us. There, we can still preserve the factory and manual production, otherwise we would have to automate,” plans Doležalová.