President of the Management Board / CEO, LPP SA (parent), House (LPP SA)
Podcast WYWIAD Z PREZESEM | Piechocki, LPP: Nie chcę pokazywać twarzy, aby normalnie żyć
To nie same pieniądze nie pozwalają normalnie żyć, ale obecność wizerunku w mediach. To powoduje, że każdy bardzo łatwo ...
About Marek Piechocki
Marek Piechocki, CEO of LPP, has discussed the company’s growth and management philosophy in several interviews. In 2022, he estimated that LPP’s revenue would reach 14 billion złoty that year, with further growth expected, and noted that the company’s expansion creates career development opportunities for employees. He also stated that LPP had been using cardboard packaging for two years, contrasting this with a Swedish competitor that still uses plastic. Piechocki described himself as “a slave to my best managers,” saying their happiness and satisfaction are his primary concern, and emphasized that responsibility is delegated to low levels within the organization, with small teams making decisions about collections and local markets. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Piechocki said LPP would not pay a dividend that year in order to preserve liquidity, and that the biggest challenge was managing employees to retain as many jobs as possible. He also commented on the difficulty of maintaining a private life, stating that he avoids showing his face in media so he can “live normally” and travel by train without being recognized. Piechocki explained that he and his family have transferred ownership of the company to a foundation called Semper Festiwal, with the goal of keeping the business together as a Polish family firm. He said the foundation’s beneficiaries were surprised to learn they would receive something, and that the company donates several million złoty annually to charitable causes, primarily in the Pomerania region.
Transcript (60 segments)
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Narrator0:00
This is the Rzeczpospolita broadcast. Interview with the president. I invite you to Cezary Szymanek. We will reveal Marek Piechocki, co-owner of LPP and co-creator of—the company behind brands such as Reserved, Cropp, and so on.
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Cezary Szymanek0:36
Millionaire or billionaire? It doesn't really matter. But I'm asking—I'm not counting, I'm saying this seriously. But actually, he's a poor man, because he's given everything to the foundation and isn't the owner anymore. The foundation is the owner. If you look closely, he really has very little—if anything, probably millions. Just before the conversation, before recording, we agreed we would... One more question that probably comes up in every interview: why do you never want to show your face?
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Marek Piechocki1:09
Listen, just so I can live normally. So I can, like today, take a train and come here. If you're recognized, you can't live normally. It's not the money itself, but having your image in the media means everyone recognizes you easily. Whether you're on public transport, walking, sitting in a restaurant, everyone suddenly watches you, points at you—you feel more tracked. You can't ride public transport. Absolutely. What's more, I ride Uber.
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Cezary Szymanek1:40
And that—out of certainty or habit?
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Marek Piechocki1:45
Habit. At my age it's hard to use Uber—it's only been around for about two years. The habit of counting every zloty, looking at it from both sides before spending—yes, I look at every zloty before spending. It became a pattern. You know what, I always try to act pragmatically, economically, because I figure—a train ride to Warsaw from Gdańsk, like today, for 77 zlotys, and it's comfortable, pleasant, and pragmatically economical.
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Cezary Szymanek2:18
Do you have the same approach with your employees, paying them a little?
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Marek Piechocki2:21
Listen, no—when it comes to salaries, I really believe this is the foundation I need to give people so they feel calm and safe supporting their families, so they don't have to think or scheme about finding a better job elsewhere.
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Cezary Szymanek2:43
What's the average salary at LPP?
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Marek Piechocki2:47
It depends on the sector, on the area. But otherwise, the best stay with us. I believe that if someone is very good, it's my problem how to satisfy them—on one hand financially, and on the other hand their professional self-fulfillment needs.
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Cezary Szymanek3:03
How much can a very good employee earn per month?
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Marek Piechocki3:05
Again, it depends on the position. If we're talking about store positions, they definitely won't earn hundreds of thousands. If we're talking about management, there are different rates. Everyone earns different amounts at different positions, but I'm convinced we pay better than the market—just so people don't spend their time thinking about where to find a better-paying job, but instead focus on building a better company.
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Cezary Szymanek3:37
How many people earn minimum wage?
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Marek Piechocki3:41
Well, in our stores we have students and assistant salespeople, although even there the pay is higher than minimum wage. Employment contracts or so-called junk contracts—most are employment contracts. We finished with junk contracts a long time ago. However, there's a group of students who actually say themselves they don't want to switch to permanent contracts. It's not so simple—there are young people who say they only want to work temporarily.
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Cezary Szymanek4:15
Anyway, let's treat this as a warm-up for the new business environment, including junk contracts—we'll come back to that. But for now, we remain with money and your approach to it. What's your relationship with money?
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Marek Piechocki4:32
Money doesn't really exist for me. Why do I do what I do? So we could show people outside that we Poles do things cooler than they often think. The outside world—Western Europe or the world in general—perceives us through the Iron Curtain, as if we're still not that good, not developed enough. Of course, many are surprised when we come with our ideas, our stores. Many were shocked. When Germans first heard we have 1,700 stores, many simply jumped up—how is it possible? Because they don't know us. I think I do this more to show the world that we Poles are not worse than competitors from Western Europe, that we do things just as well and many times perhaps even better. Probably a bit to cure my own inner complexes.
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Cezary Szymanek5:30
After communism—I wanted to ask about that. Is this a way to cure your complexes from when you were in Germany?
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Marek Piechocki5:41
Well, I worked in Germany—you probably read about it. I studied and worked casually in '85, '87. We were always treated there as, you know, the second category. But I think the whole country was treated that way. I think this is now gradually changing. All of Europe now sees Poles as hardworking, honest, and so on. But we're still—within this country, all our companies are small. Some say LPP is a giant—it's terribly annoying, because we're a small company. On the European market, we're only number 27. Do you know who came fourth in ski jumping after the top three? You don't know. That's why we're probably a shark in our little pond. But when you look at the European or global market, we're small.
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Cezary Szymanek6:46
Let's get back to those complexes—what is it, curing complexes from the past?
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Marek Piechocki6:49
It used to be, perhaps. Today it's not so much. I think we no longer have those complexes, because often external companies come to visit our distribution centers and are very impressed. Peek & Cloppenburg from Germany announced a reference visit—they want to see how we handle logistics. And that's a certain kind of satisfaction, because it's one of the biggest companies in Germany in our industry. If you go to Berlin or Munich, they're one of the biggest clothing retailers. And if the whole Peek & Cloppenburg board comes to see how we do things—that's real satisfaction.
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Cezary Szymanek7:35
How do you compensate for those times—communist times, for example?
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Marek Piechocki7:39
I don't compensate. I can tell you, I was a fairly young man. I was lucky, because in '89, when it all happened, I was 28 years old. So I was full of willingness, enthusiasm, and energy, and the market only then allowed me to develop. Sometimes when people ask me why companies grow, I think it was partly—with the larger scale it started becoming a way to cure complexes. But in the beginning, it was a great reluctance to work in those state communist companies, where to achieve something you had to join the party.
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Cezary Szymanek8:21
Were you in the party?
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Marek Piechocki8:24
I wasn't anywhere. I wasn't in the party. I wasn't even in the Specialist Association of Polish Students or anything like that. I was always far from politics, always far from power. You know, I don't need to—more questions probably, whether I was in any records? No. I wasn't in any registers. We knew I was too much of a jerk for anyone to take an interest in me. But coming back to this—the company partly arose from the reluctance to work in those corrupt communist companies. I wanted to do something of my own, change the world.
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Cezary Szymanek9:10
When it was about proving something to yourself, making amends—and now how do you do it? I'll ask directly: do you spend on luxuries? We all spend on pleasures. What was the last expensive thing you bought that you don't want to admit?
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Marek Piechocki9:36
I admit to everything. The last most expensive purchase—I bought it with private money because I wanted to see how it works. I decided: company money—no, with private money, not company money. I didn't take an invoice. Because I have a Mac, I wanted to see how it works differently on Windows than on Mac. So I bought it with my own private money. At the company we have Windows-based computers, so I thought it wouldn't be ethical, it wouldn't be elegant for me to buy it with company funds—soon everyone would come to me wanting Macs. We have brands where main designers use Macs, but all regular employees use Windows on normal PCs. So I wanted to try something different—I bought that computer with private money.
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Cezary Szymanek10:27
But what was it—an iPad? Is that the most expensive recent purchase?
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Marek Piechocki10:32
Exactly. Otherwise, I have weaknesses, like everyone does. I have a weakness for vinyl records and I have expensive audio equipment. That's a weakness. A bike too—I have a very nice one. Not yachts—I don't have yachts, you know. I have a company car. But let me tell you—I don't surround myself with luxury things because I think it builds barriers with people, with society. Imagine I bought a Bentley. I could imagine it, looking at others like me. But a car I really like is the Audi A7. I had one before, and now I also have an Audi A7. Very good car, I praise it. But I assume I can't afford it, because my moral losses would be too great. A beautiful Maserati Gran Turismo—but when I drove one in Sopot, everyone pointed at me. I don't want that. That's too high a moral cost. Financially, I could afford a new Maserati every day.
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Cezary Szymanek11:54
What are you ashamed of then? I get the impression you're ashamed of your own money.
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Marek Piechocki12:02
No, I'm not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed? I'm not ashamed of anything I've done or anything I have. Everything was, you could say, earned hard with my own hands. I have the luck that I didn't privatize any state factories, I didn't take over any state companies, I don't have any contracts with state-owned entities. Everything I had to win from the client with my own hands. I'm not ashamed of that at all. The only thing is, as I told you, when it comes to luxury things—I don't want to use them because it would divide me from society, from people. I'd rather fly a normal plane—Wizz Air to London or wherever.
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Cezary Szymanek12:58
To your store in London on Oxford Street? You fly in the evening, absolutely? The best are the Gdańsk flights, cheap airlines or Ryanair. So with me—I should fly with people like you? We haven't established whether we're millionaires or billionaires, but definitely very rich people—let's call it that. I don't blame you, talking with them.
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Marek Piechocki13:27
Some probably perceive me as different—as an oddball. That's true. But on the other hand, listen—I don't impose my lifestyle on anyone. I don't tell anyone to live like me. Everyone is the blacksmith of their own fate. Everyone does what they want. I don't flaunt it, I don't deliberately manifest anything. I live normally, like a normal person. And I say: hey, let me live normally. I want to live like everyone else. Let me choose and do what I want. And I want to live like—I'm super happy with it. I have more goals, ventures, ideas. And I say: damn, leave me alone, let me live normally.
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Cezary Szymanek14:16
Well, meaning to live well and be happy with life—according to Marek Piechocki.
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Marek Piechocki14:19
Listen, you know what—living well means realizing your dreams. It means being able to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and honestly say that I'm not ashamed of everything I did yesterday or over the past years. I didn't deceive anyone, I didn't fool anyone. I can equally well look in the mirror and in the eyes of those I sometimes had to fire—of course they can have complaints against me sometimes, but I gave everyone a fair chance. I fairly told them: listen, improve, change, you have six months or a year. If nothing changes, I'd say: sorry, but we have to part ways. We set clear rules of the game. And that allows you to sleep peacefully, to hug yourself in the morning and look in the mirror—no guilty conscience, no need to run from it. And if on top of that you do what you like—because once a month I have a meeting with new people who come to work. During this meeting, at the end, we always talk about the company culture. Simple things—don't deceive, behave fairly, because sometimes young people are buyers with five million dollars to spend and could treat suppliers condescendingly. I say: listen, you can't do that. Treat others the way you want to be treated. At headquarters alone, 2,800 people work. I can't vouch for everyone, but I tell each person: if you feel someone is behaving differently toward you, here's my email, here's my phone number. We have an independent ethics committee. Everyone around knows this is the company's culture.
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Cezary Szymanek16:08
One thing is your words, another is their execution. Have there been such cases?
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Marek Piechocki16:11
There have been such cases, of course. But then we have this internal ethics committee—they can report anonymously or directly, by email, that someone is behaving incorrectly. And then we immediately start looking at what's happening in that department, why it's happening. I have every year a climate survey in every department. If this climate survey comes out poorly, we immediately look closely. Because really, you can't run any department well if you don't have a good atmosphere—people have to be happy with what they do.
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Cezary Szymanek16:59
But coming back to what you were asking—what makes a person happy?
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Marek Piechocki17:06
What makes me happy? A person is happy if they do things that bring them joy. Even when young people come to us to work, I say: listen, you have to do what you like. If you won't like it, I immediately encourage you to look for another place within the company, or even to leave. Because soon someone will notice they're doing their job poorly, they're frustrated, and this spiral spins up. So part of our life satisfaction comes from doing things we do, realizing our passions. I actually do things I like, and that's why I'm a happy person.
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Cezary Szymanek17:53
And besides what you like, which is largely work—what else gives you joy in life?
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Marek Piechocki18:02
Family gives me great joy. I have four children, I have grandchildren. Those children are another challenge—because here, as you can see, the company is at a reasonable scale already. On Polish standards, quite a lot, but on the European scale, we really—we can't avoid the comparison.
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Cezary Szymanek18:22
Let's not run from this—returning from birthdays to business?
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Marek Piechocki18:26
For me, the next challenge is that all this capital I transferred to the foundation—the children will continue to develop these goods, they will realize themselves in various areas. Of course, they want to do this themselves. I have some who declare they want to. I have some who haven't declared yet. In the end, they have to be happy.
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Cezary Szymanek18:53
You already have four children. How many have declared, how many haven't?
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Marek Piechocki18:55
Two have declared. My daughter is still studying, and there's another young man who's also studying. So they're on some path of development. For the youngest ones at the start—we have something at our company: if someone from the family wants to work here, they first need to work for three years at an external company where their name doesn't mean much, to prove they're suitable for our company.
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Cezary Szymanek19:17
I thought they'd immediately become a director or president.
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Marek Piechocki19:19
Well, I'll tell you—it's probably worse. One of my sons worked three years at Citibank. He was a manager there, about 40 people under him. At some point I said: listen, Marcin, do you want to continue your career in that bank? He said two options... What do you think about coming to LPP and trying your hand at clothing? Good idea. But do you realize this means you'll start as a buyer's assistant, then a salesperson in a store, then you'll grow and we'll see what happens next? He went. For a year he was a buyer's assistant, then worked in a store first for three months in London, then ran his own store here in the Tricity area. Now he's responsible for two of our brands, for the product side. He's growing. We'll see what happens next.
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Cezary Szymanek20:26
Do you spoil your children? Probably not?
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Marek Piechocki20:29
You know, with Przemek we talked when we came—I think rather not. I have a firm hand when it comes to upbringing. Whenever they wanted anything in their life, they first had to earn their part, and then dad could chip in.
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Cezary Szymanek20:44
But surely because of this—wait, 'dad will chip in'—that means...
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Marek Piechocki20:49
They wanted to buy a car—a Renault 18. No problem. They had it much better than their peers, because if they put down two wheels, I'd put down the other two. Because if you couldn't just give four wheels—that would be highly un-educational. Could I have? Yes. But really it would have spoiled my children. I can tell you even one of them once wanted to go on vacation to Europe. Their first cars were ten-year-old Golfs—that's all they could afford.
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Cezary Szymanek21:20
But you could afford others?
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Marek Piechocki21:29
I can tell you I could afford new Mercedes, probably, but that would be of little educational value for them.
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Cezary Szymanek21:37
So your children...
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Marek Piechocki21:40
They never counted on receiving anything from me. I always told them to think about themselves, to be self-sufficient. On the other hand, each of them had to be prepared for the possibility that I might go bankrupt someday and nothing would be left. In the meantime, things have come together, so it seems something will remain. But when a person is prepared for independence and doesn't expect anything like manna from heaven, I think that's the best start in life. Because then if something appears, it's great and you can develop it further.
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Cezary Szymanek22:15
And they never came to you and said: father, give—or won't you take this money with you to the grave? Share it out.
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Marek Piechocki22:29
Actually, about four or five years ago when we started meeting—it turned out that something will remain after me. They were surprised that they would actually receive something, that they would be beneficiaries of this foundation. Because generally I thought about giving everything to some charitable foundation or giving it away anywhere.
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Cezary Szymanek22:49
Were they raised with the feeling that they would never have anything from this? You don't give money away?
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Marek Piechocki22:58
I give away a lot.
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Cezary Szymanek23:00
How much is a lot?
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Marek Piechocki23:02
It varies. I can say that as a company, we spend several million a year on various charitable causes. And we try to think first about those around us—on the Pomeranian coast, children's homes of various kinds.
I feel a certain kind of responsibility—I owe something to this country. It's a conviction that I should first help those close to me, and that's probably why I'm more focused on the local Polish market than thinking about what's happening in other countries. I believe we're still too poor as a country. We need to first think about ourselves, about Poles. I come from a small town, Kościerzyna, population 25,000. I know what it looks like five kilometers from Kościerzyna, in a village called Skorzewo—what educational chances children have there compared to those in a big city. I'm deeply convinced we should first help Poland grow. We Poles still earn four times less than people in Western Europe. The level of education is still lower. That's why I'm fundamentally oriented toward Poland. Sometimes when you help, you have to decide: do you give money, or do you throw a fishing rod? Since the beginning, because we employ many young people, I've always tried to involve them. There are different forms—we go and paint an entire children's clinic or organize whole rooms. As a company we provide the money, and these young people bring their passion, engagement, and time. These shared activities unite us—working together on these projects. We buy equipment from IKEA that needs assembling, and assembling it together bonds us.