COVER STORY
According to our long time experience, to succeed
in that society you should accept the rules of
the game. To succeed in Germany you should
think and act as Germans do. There is no space
for improvisation and application of the well-
known “Balkan way” of doing business. Doing
business, for example, with Lidl in the FMCG
industry, means the same as doing business with
Microsoft in IT industry or BMW in automotive
industry. There is a need to change or to adapt
the overall corporative philosophy of doing
business, to become effective, innovative, social
and environmentally responsible company. It is in
the same time a two-way reversible process, from
one side the company has a very hard battle on
the extremely competitive market place attacked
from the producers all around the world, but on
other hand, it is a very useful process of learning,
which makes the company more efficient, vivid
and flexible.
Certainly in such an environment, many companies
and even the whole industrial branches will
not succeed to survive, i.e., there will be even
redefinition of the positions of entire industry
sectors. Some of them will grow and gain
competitiveness, and some will be completely
extinguished. It is well known what happened
to the economies and industrial branches in
Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, after
their entry into the EU. But it is also well known
about the decrease of unemployment rate, GDP
growth, better and fairer dispersion of national
income, and better overall quality of life, they got
after entering the EU. Of course, there are also
countries that, after joining the EU, cannot boast
brilliant achievements, which is just another proof
that the EU cannot enforce companies and / or
countries to be smart. Simplified, EU just creates,
let say, a fair and equal rules for all and suggests
what would be good to be done. It is completely
up to us If we (as a companies or society) would
like to be enough painstaking and smart to use
opportunities and to change ourselves in a
better way (for example, as R. Ireland, and Baltic
countries have done). Our experience says that in
EU, as a club of 28 different nations, in business
(as in life probably), authenticity always wins, and
never (or very rarely) fake or suspicious values
succeed. So, besides accepting the EU rules of
the game, my recommendation is to create and
develop your own authenticity that will result in
recognition in such a big market and increase the
chances for success.
Finally, we need to be fully aware of the
opportunities and obstacles that are waiting us
in EU, but we also need to know that the degree
of success in the European market and the
improvement of the overall quality of life depend,
on a large extent, on ourselves.
New Member Highlight
The KOSTAL Group is a German fourth generation
family-owned company founded in 1912 with global
presence in 21 countries on 5 continents. KOSTAL globally
employees over 20,000 people with 83% of them abroad
and annual revenue of over $3.2 billion. Kostal Macedonia,
as part of KOSTAL Automotive Electrical Systems, is
responsible for the development, production and distribution
of components, modules and systems for sophisticated
electrical, electronic and mechatronic technology in car
bodies. Current customers for the Ohrid facility include
BMW, Daimler, Porsche, VW, Audi, Tesla and Rolls Royce
with main market sales in Europe and USA.”
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EMERGING MACEDONIA