Podcast WYWIAD Z PREZESEM | Piechocki, LPP: Nie chcę pokazywać twarzy, aby normalnie żyć

Listen, only so that I can live normally. So that I can, like today, get on a train, come to get money. It's not the money itself that prevents normal living, but the presence of one's image in the media causes everyone to recognize you very easily. Whether you're in public transport or sitting anywhere in a restaurant, and then everyone suddenly watches you, points at you. You feel more tracked. You can't ride public transport without being noticed. Absolutely. What's more, I ride Uber.

Habit. Uber at my age is hard to get used to because it's only been around for about two years. The habit of counting every zloty, looking at it from both sides before spending it. I look at every zloty before spending it. It's become a pattern. I always try to act pragmatically or economically. For example, a train ride from Gdańsk to Warsaw, like today, costs 77 zlotys, and it's comfortable, pleasant, and pragmatically economical.

No, no. When it comes to salaries, I really believe that's the foundation I must give people so they feel calm and secure in maintaining their families, so they don't have to think or scheme about finding a better job elsewhere.

It depends on which sectors, which areas. But the best people stay with us. I believe that if someone is very good, it's my problem how to satisfy them — both financially and in terms of professional self-fulfillment. How much can a very good person earn per month? Again, it depends on the position. If we're talking about store positions, they won't earn thousands. If we're talking about management positions, there are different rates. Everyone earns different money at different positions. But I'm convinced we pay better than the market, precisely so that people don't think about finding a better-paying job, but instead focus on building a better company.

Well, in our stores we have students or assistant salespeople, although even there it's above minimum wage. There's no minimum wage. Most positions are full-time contracts. As for zero-hour contracts, we finished with those a long time ago. However, there's a certain group of students who actually say they don't want to switch to full-time. It's not that simple with zero-hour contracts because there are young people who say they only want temporary work.

Money doesn't exist for me. Why do I do what I do? So that we can show people outside that we Poles do things that are cooler than they often think. The outside world, Western Europe, or the world in general, perceives us from behind the Iron Curtain — that we're still not that good, not that developed. Many are surprised when we come with our ideas, our stores. Many are shocked. For instance, when Germans first heard that we have 1,700 stores, many of them were simply surprised and jumped up — how is that possible? Because they don't know us. I think I do it more to show the world that we Poles are not worse than our partners or competitors from Western Europe. We do things just as well, and many times perhaps better.

Well, I worked in Germany, studied and worked part-time around 1985-87. We were always treated as second-class. But I think the whole country was treated differently too. I think it's gradually changing now. All of Europe already sees Poles as hardworking, reliable, and so on. But we're still in the next tier. Within this country, all our companies are small. Some say LPP is a giant, which is really irritating because we're a small company. On the European market, we're only number 27. It's like in ski jumping — after the top three, you don't know who's seventh. We're a shark in our own little pond, but when we look at the European or global market, we're a small player.

Today 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 do logistics. That's a certain kind of satisfaction, because they're one of the biggest companies in Germany in our industry. If you go to Germany, to Berlin or Munich, they're one of the largest clothing retailers. And if they want to see how we do it, and the entire Peek & Cloppenburg board comes in the morning, that's a satisfaction.

I don't compensate. I can say that I was a fairly young man, I was lucky because in 1989 I was about 21-28 years old. I was full of desire and energy, and the market only then allowed me to develop. Sometimes when people ask why the company grew, I think that at a larger scale it started to become a way of healing complexes, but at the beginning it was a strong dislike of working in those communist state enterprises where you had to either join the party or be someone to achieve anything. I was never in the party, not even in the Polish Students' Association or anything like that. I was always far from politics, far from power. I was too much of a jerk for anyone to bother with me. But returning to the point — I think the company was born partly from a dislike of working in those corrupt communist firms. I wanted to do something of my own, to change the world.

Everyone spends on some pleasures. The last most expensive purchase I made with private money was a computer, because I wanted to see how it works differently on Windows than on Mac. I bought it with my own private money because in the company we have Windows-based computers, and I thought it wouldn't be ethical to buy it with company money. Otherwise everyone would come to me wanting Macs or whatever. We have brands where the main designers use Macs, but all normal employees use Windows on normal PCs. So I wanted to try something different, and I bought that computer with private money.

Well, I have weaknesses. I have a weakness for vinyl records and I have expensive equipment. Those are weaknesses. I also have a bicycle. I don't have yachts. These are things like a company car, but a company car. I'll tell you something — I don't surround myself with luxury things because I think it builds barriers with people and society. The more luxurious you buy, imagine I bought a Bentley — I can imagine it looking at others like me. But even so, there's a car I really like called the Audi A7. I had one before, and now I have another Audi A7. Very good car, I'm happy with it. But I believe I can't afford it because my moral losses would be too great. A Maserati Gran Turismo is beautiful, but if I drove one in Sopot, everyone would point at me. I don't want that. It's too high a moral cost for me. Financially, I could probably afford a new Maserati every day.

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 earned hard with my own hands. I didn't privatize any state enterprises, didn't take over any state companies, didn't have any contracts with state-owned firms. Everything I had to fight for from clients with my own hands. I'm not ashamed of that at all. The only thing, as I said, is that when it comes to luxury things, I don't want to use them because they would divide me from society, from people. I'd rather fly a normal airline, Wizz Air, to London or anywhere. The best flights from Gdańsk are the cheap airlines — Ryanair or Wizz Air.

Some probably see me as an oddball, that's true. But on the other hand, I don't impose my lifestyle on anyone. I don't tell anyone to live like me. Everyone is the master of their own fate, everyone does what they want. I don't show off or manifest anything. I live normally, like a normal person, and I say: 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 this — I'm super happy with it. I have some goals, ventures, ideas, and I say: leave me alone, let me live normally. Live well and be satisfied with life.

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, didn't fool anyone. I can look in the mirror and in the eyes of those I sometimes had to fire. Of course, they may have complaints against me, but I gave everyone a fair chance. I said honestly: improve, change, you have half a year or a year. If nothing changes, I said: sorry, but we have to part ways. We set clear rules of the game. That's what allows you to sleep peacefully, to look in the mirror in the morning without guilt, without having to run away from it. And if, on top of that, you do what you love — I repeat to everyone, I have a monthly meeting with new people who come to work. At the end of that meeting, we always talk about the company, about culture, about simple things: don't deceive, behave fairly. Young people sometimes are buyers who go to a supplier with 5 million dollars to spend and might treat them condescendingly. I say: you can't do that. You must behave fairly toward everyone. Treat others the way you want to be treated. I believe that because 2,800 people work at headquarters alone, I can't guarantee for everyone, but I tell each person: if you feel someone in the company is treating you differently, my email is there, my phone is there, anyone can write to me. We have an ethics committee that can listen to such cases. Everyone knows that's the company culture. Of course, there have been cases where things went wrong, but then we have an internal ethics committee where people can report anonymously or directly by email if someone is behaving improperly. We immediately look into what's happening in that department. I also have an annual climate survey in every department. If the climate survey comes out poorly, we look closely at what's happening, because you can't run any department well without a good atmosphere. People must be satisfied with what they do. But returning to what you asked — what makes a person happy? If people do things that bring them joy. Even when young people come to work for us, I say: remember, I tell my children the same thing, you must do what you love. If you don't love it, I encourage you to find another place within the company, or even to leave, because soon you'll realize you're doing the job poorly, you're frustrated, and the spiral keeps turning. Either they'll fire everyone, or they'll leave on their own, and it'll be bad. So part of our life satisfaction is doing the things we do, realizing our passions. I do things I love, and that's why I'm a happy person.

Family gives me great joy. I have four children, I have grandchildren. These children are another challenge — whether I'll be able to... The company is at a reasonably sensible size, but on Polish standards it's large. On European standards, let's not run away from that. For me, the next challenge is to ensure that all the capital I've transferred to the foundation — that my children will continue to develop these goods, that they'll realize themselves in various areas. Of course, they want to do it themselves. I have some who declare they want to, and some who haven't declared yet. In the end, they must be happy.

Two have declared. A daughter is still studying, and there's another young man who's also studying. They're on some path of development. The youngest ones, at the start, must — in our family, if someone wants to work in the company, they must first work three years at an external company where their name means little, to prove to the world that they're even suited for our company. They don't just become a director or president right away. I'll tell you, it's probably worse — one of my sons worked at Citibank for three years, was a manager with about 40 people under him. At some point I asked him: Marcin, do you want to continue your career in this bank or not? He said he was considering two different options. I asked: what do you think about coming to LPP and trying your luck with clothing? He said: good idea. But do you realize that means you'll start at the cemetery, you'll be a buyer's assistant, then a salesperson in a store, then you'll grow, and we'll see what happens next. There's some risk. He went for it. For now, he's growing. He was an assistant buyer for a year, then worked in a store — first 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 of those two brands. He's growing, and we'll see what happens next.

I don't think so. Actually, I was just talking with Przemek when we arrived, and I think they're not spoiled. I have a firm hand when it comes to raising them. If they wanted anything in their lives, they first had to earn their part, and then dad could chip in. But I think that's why — if 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. But if you couldn't give four wheels, that would be highly uneducational. I could have, but it would have spoiled my children. I can tell you that even one of them once wanted to go on vacation to Europe, and their first car was a ten-year-old Golf — that's all they could afford. But I could afford new Mercedeses, but that would have been uneducational for them. So my children never counted on receiving anything from me. I always told them to think about themselves, to be self-sufficient. But I also looked at it so that each of them had to be prepared for the possibility that I might go bankrupt someday and nothing would remain. In the meantime, things have already come together, so it seems something will remain after me. 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 nice and can be developed further.

It's actually — I think about 4-5 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 I was thinking about giving everything to some charitable foundation or distributing it somewhere. They were raised with the feeling that they would never have anything from it.

I give a lot. How much is a lot? Different amounts. As a company, we spend several million annually on various charitable causes. We try to think first about our surroundings — in Pomerania, children's homes, various kinds of...

Of these types of ventures, we actually give quite a lot. I also feel a certain sense of responsibility — I owe something to this country. Personally, I have this conviction that I should first help those close to me, and that's why I have more focus 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, 25,000 people. I know what it looks like 5 kilometers from Kościerzyna — a village called Skorzewo — what educational opportunities children there have 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 education level is still lower, and that's why I'm deeply oriented toward Poland. When you help, do you give money or do you throw a fishing rod? From the very beginning, since many young people work at our company, I've tried to engage them too. We paint entire children's hospitals, organize whole rooms — the company provides the money, and these young people bring their passion, engagement, and time. These joint projects unite us.

Unfortunately, I can tell you that comfort is increasingly disappearing because we're one of the larger employers on the coast. When you go to a café, someone always recognizes you. But when I go to Warsaw, I'm completely anonymous, which allows me to live normally. Nobody on the train pointed at me as the guy with a thousand stores.

About 1,800. The numbers keep changing, new ones keep being added, but it's around 1,800. But to get back to charity — when people write you letters asking for help, for example for their mother's surgery.

In that regard, I prefer to take a more systematic approach. Letters do happen, but I prefer to do things systematically. Why do we have a foundation? We founded it, and soon it will be a public benefit organization, completely transparent. I'd rather have professionals handle it than do it spontaneously. We should help in various areas — when we talk about aid, we can't focus on just one area. Fundamentally, we focus on children, since we receive countless requests from sports clubs and various organizations. Despite that, we're more focused on people who are excluded or in need. Those two areas are our main ones — we don't support sports or art, unfortunately, except in areas related to art schools. We don't do those types of ventures.

One of the girls once called me 'hardware.' I think there's some truth to that — I'm not easy, but most entrepreneurs aren't easy. I try very hard, beyond the norm, to maintain fairness. I believe — and I'll say this for the second time — that fairness is paramount.

His money, his business. He earned it honestly. His money, his business. Let everyone spend as they wish. But my approach is this — I remember once, we sometimes travel to see how we built new stores, we go with the arrangement team. At breakfast, one of our construction coordinators was so happy because he'd bought Zepter pots and spent about ten thousand on them — probably his entire salary. I thought, 'Good Lord, I'd never spend my whole salary on pots.' But then I thought, that's his dream — he works hard to spend on what he wants. If each of us works hard to fulfill our dreams or whims, there's no problem. So if someone comes with one car or another, that's their business.

Like I said, fairness is a paramount thing for me — so that everyone feels treated fairly. Of course, you can't ensure this one hundred percent, but treating everyone equally and fairly is paramount for a good atmosphere in the company. This is also a source of social conflicts — the lack of a sense of fairness. I believe the same applies to a company. Everyone can endure harder or easier conditions when they feel everyone else is in the same boat. That's probably why I sit with everyone in the open-plan area — I don't have an office, I don't have a palm tree.

That's hard to say. When you think that right now we're building a distribution center for 860 million, we spent 196 million on building another distribution center, the architecture projects we were just looking at cost us 60 million euros over two years — it's quite hard to call someone like that a miser. When you think we're spending 760 million on building stores that local craft workshops produce for us, pack into containers and send off — it's hard to call such a person a miser. Rather, I'd say I'm a patriot, especially a local one.

I'm probably an economic patriot. I distance myself from patriotism with sabers and charging into battle. I'm more of a positivist creator, working from the ground up. My patriotism is expressed in thinking about the local community, and 'local' can extend beyond Gdańsk, to Pomerania, to the entire country.

Yes. Actually, in an interview recently, last year we paid nine hundred million in all the various — they now beautifully call them 'levies' — taxes. Did your heart swell? I said these are obligations that simply exist. I live in this country. On the other hand, the marshal of the voivodeship invited me and said he knew we were one of the three largest taxpayers. I decided to check exactly how that works. We're from here, we're from this country. I owe something to this society, this country. Regardless of how hard it is, I still see that the opportunities we receive are in this country. I earned this money here — of course half today comes from abroad, but the first half all came from this country. My children grew up here, I grew up here. I'm grateful to this country. It's not like everything fell from the sky or I earned it all in the United States.

Absolutely not. We have two rules at LPP that we've always followed — we've always been far from politics, far from religious declarations. In different periods — ten years ago, five years ago, three years ago — various approaches and pilgrimages were made. I see that the whole political world has learned that Piechocki is completely apolitical, and the only thing you can get from him is a nice shirt and store vouchers. I remember when President Wałęsa once came to us and said he had a problem because he was flying somewhere and Danuśka had burned his shirt. 'No problem, Mr. President, in three hours you'll have a shirt.' But that's where our support for all politicians begins and ends. Absolutely not — this is an area where others are good at it, let them remain so. We are good at what we do. We want to be completely apolitical and non-denominational.

I explain to all the young people who come to us every month that our faith is faith in yesterday's sales results being better than a year ago — we check our phones in the morning, we have an app that shows us the dashboard. That's what we believe in. As for politics, foreign politics interests us most — we look at whether we sell better in Russia, the Czech Republic, or Ukraine. That's the extent of our faith and politics. Privately, behind closed doors, everyone has their own convictions and beliefs, and behind LPP's doors everyone can do that internally. We want to focus our energy not on arguing internally about whether we're central, right-wing, or left-wing, but on how to beat our competitor and satisfy our customer.

We must be tolerant, I think. Many people work at our company. I always try to treat others as I'd want to be treated. We've worked with China for years — China had a bad image many years ago. It really upset me when some of our employees treated Chinese people as inferior or less educated. They're often much better educated than us. I was very particular about that. Today we have people from many countries — the chief artistic director is Japanese, we have British, Korean, Brazilian employees, coordinators from countries where we have stores, Russians, Ukrainians. We must see them all as equally good as us, regardless of what country they come from, what faith they have, or what their sexual orientation is.

I'd prefer not to manifest either one direction or another. Although on the other hand, in our industry — the fashion industry — many men work in it with a different orientation. You know well that the biggest fashion designers — Dolce & Gabbana and the rest, Dior and others — you know they have a different sexual orientation. We also tolerate them and treat them equally. Not tolerate — treat equally. Everyone is equal. Chinese people are not inferior, they're equally good. We want them, we need them. But I'm against manifesting, so I wouldn't want to hang either a rainbow flag or a religious flag or any other flag.

You shouldn't regret anything. We've made a tremendous number of mistakes — probably the most on the Polish market. But I believe the strength of our organization is that when mistakes are made, people aren't penalized for them. Instead, we quickly recover, fix things, and run forward. I claim I've made a horrendous number of mistakes, but whoever doesn't make mistakes and doesn't take enough risk to achieve something — I compare it to skiing. If you're not falling, you're skiing poorly. You have to fall to overcome the next barriers, to reach higher.

I manage myself, along with the board — Jacek, Sławek, or anyone else. We see when we've made mistakes. Well, that's what we have wives for — to sometimes put us back on track, since they're completely independent.

I've always read a lot — I still read, though probably less now. I've always had three categories: management books — I have so many that I've moved most of them to the company for young people to read; self-development, when it wasn't yet well known in Poland; and industry books — fashion retailing, detailing. My constant favorite is Peter Drucker — the founder, you could say, the precursor and creator of management. His practice and writings, his subsequent books — I believe everyone should read them. Many other management theories are based on his work. As for business books, a breakthrough book for me was 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' — it's truly outstanding, I recommend it to everyone. It teaches you how to be a decent person. Then there's history — you can learn a lot from history. Those are the three categories.

Like I said, I like listening to Drucker — he's so wise it's unbelievable. I keep returning to him and his books. I recently found a book from my library, something like 365 messages from Drucker, one for each day. But if I were to look at people I admire — there are many decent people. I think, for example, that Bill Gates is a decent person. He made a much better impression on me than Steve Jobs. I know Jobs is famous, but I deeply disrespect a man who disowns his own children. He did something great for technology, but I'm fascinated by what I'd call the distortion of truth. I remember there was a passage where Jobs accused Gates of stealing his mouse. Gates said, 'Listen, we were both at a Xerox conference — Xerox invented that mouse, we both stole it.' In those terms, I respect Gates more than the world respects Jobs. Fairness and decency are values that matter more to me because you shouldn't do business at the expense of others.

We already have a succession plan, because we meet as a family — we have a family council. What happens after? The first time I said it, my daughter burst into tears thinking I had cancer. That was 45 years ago, but now everyone has learned that we need to think very seriously about what happens after I leave. We're preparing Marcin in some way. I estimate that within the next ten years I should definitely leave. Today I'm 59, going on 60 — it shouldn't be long now. I wouldn't want my child to carry the burden at an age when he's 60.

I think the most important thing is that unfortunately you need to realize it costs tremendous effort — great engagement, tremendous effort, a lot of time, a lot of sacrifice. But on the other hand, I'm convinced that if someone wants something, they can achieve it. We have many such people at LPP who started as sales assistants or box carriers and today are heads of entire departments. I'd say it requires very hard work, determination, and you need to know what you want. Then you can really achieve great things.

Give me a break — I still have a lot to do. Although there was a moment — in 2002 we implemented incredible software from Retek, it was great software. The Americans invited us, put us on business class flights, paid everything so I could speak and show others that we can do extraordinary things. Gap couldn't handle it — the implementation took them three years, and we did it in eight months. They kept inviting me to speak and present. But I feel I still have much more to do in the economy. I feel LPP is still a small company. I'd like my children to one day lead our family businesses — not just LPP, but also our hotel investments. I want them to develop this family business even better than I have. That would be my dream. That's why our foundation is called 'Semper Festiwal' — always together. I want them to be together, for the capital not to be divided, to build a large Polish family company. There are many such family companies in Germany. In Poland, I'm the first generation that has a chance to build something like this, because under communism companies could only be small. It would be wonderful to have a Polish family company that's a showcase on the world stage.