Pavel Bouška – Horizonty růstu: Mezinárodní expanze rodinných firem

Good morning everyone. I enjoy family business—I was with colleagues from our branches until 2 a.m., so I hope it doesn't show too much. I'm known as the owner and second generation continuing our family business: we make dog food and supplies for dogs, cats, and other pets. What might not be as known is that besides being an entrepreneur actively working at VAFO, I'm also a passive investor. My investments fall into three levels. About 10 years ago I met a consultant from a Big Four firm, and we hit it off—today Petr is my partner. Together we own a family office called Fermia, where we invest in other companies. We have a bike and ski shop, and now a new trend selling kids' items. Our most significant investment was taking over several Czech family firms in trouble due to COVID and assembling a health and wellness holding. The first was Food, making healthy bars, and we built a holding around it. By consolidating we saved costs and got it nearly into the black; today that holding has about 1.5 billion CZK in turnover. I also like working with people I find sympathetic. I met Pavel Přikryl and Luboš Černý, who helped me with strategy at VAFO, and we founded Fazole—a vehicle that invests in startups with a clear B2B strategy. With all respect to Czech business, we're very good at finding innovative technical solutions—world-class in some IT fields—but we're weaker at bringing them to market, especially B2C. In B2B, the better product usually wins, so we focus there. We've made several investments with other partners in B2B tech solutions. And as life went on, I met friends and we have a nice coworking center in the city center and bought a brewery with pub buddies years ago. Now back to VAFO. I'm the second generation—my father founded the company officially in 1994, though it started a bit earlier. It was a surprise to me. I was a teenager on exchange in America, came back from California, and suddenly my father, who had been a scientist working at the Academy of Sciences, said we'd make dog food. My older siblings thought he was crazy. I had the advantage of being in high school with no career, and I'd seen different pet products in the US, so I thought it might not be a bad idea. Since my father didn't speak foreign languages, I helped translate when buying the first technology—I was 16. Later I did marketing and sales, though I didn't know how. In the 90s demand was so high you could sell anything. Through coincidences and hard work, we built VAFO into one of the top five in Europe. You see some numbers. Last night at the party I realized our Paris and UK colleagues were joking, and someone praised James, head of our digital division, for boosting online sales. I remarked it was the first time a French person praised a Brit, and his colleague Andrea said, 'But the food still sucks.' So okay. I'm from a generation that had good first trips to America thanks to strong US government support, but later I hitchhiked through Europe—I remember sleeping in the car and changing into a clean shirt before meetings because we couldn't afford a hotel. When we drove from Germany, we hid the Czech license plate in a garage so no one would think badly. Those hardships taught me to build a European company. We're among the top 20 globally, top 5 in Europe. I could talk about this for a long time, but I'm ready for questions. What's interesting is how we operate and where we're going. I have three sons, the oldest is 19 and doesn't know what to study, so there's work ahead. I believe the company should have professional management—ownership can be passed on, but not necessarily management. When I took over from my father, the company had about 25 employees; it was different. Today it's more complicated. Sorry, I'm running out of time, but I wanted to talk about our strategy. We're in a good position, but we're between global giants like Mars and Nestlé with budgets orders of magnitude larger, and small agile startups that are quick and innovative. We decided to stand in the middle: we give our brands maximum independence—like Hau Haowu and Duxmark in Finland, which we acquired and are now market leaders—while providing production, R&D, and corporate strength. That's what we do differently from other European players. Thank you, and sorry for going over time.