erpec news, 'The Big Interview'
erpec news, Issue No 3, May 2008, Page 14-15:
"For the next six months we will be interviewing some of the most senior players in the retail petroleum supply sector and first up is someone everyone knows, that is anyone who has been involved with creating signage for service stations in Europe over the last 20 years. Alex Kubald, is Managing Director of Kubald GmbH, a leading supplier of signware and illuminated advertising products, first established way back in the mid 1930’s. Today, in the retail petroleum sector, Kubald GmbH is regarded as one of the few global players in the market.
erpec news caught up with Alex a few miles outside of Hanover, Germany, at Kubald HQ, where he was pleased to answer a few questions about Kubald GmbH, the signage industry, himself and some new initiatives which may have worldwide implications for the signage industry.
EN: Back in the 1930’s, how did Kubald GmbH first establish itself?
AK: In 1935 we were just a shop in Hanover, owned by my Grandfather and Grandmother, selling electrical appliances. As business developed, my Grandparent’s identified a market for industrial lamps and after buying enough stock they started to rent them out to local companies such as builders. Before long they were manufacturing lamps themselves which you could say was the start of the manufacturing business of Kubald GmbH.
EN: Where is the connection between industrial lamps and signs?
AK: There was obviously a great deal of building work which needed to be carried out in Hanover after 1945 as it suffered tremendous damage from bombing raids due to the industrial nature of the city. The experience my Grandparents gained from making lamps in pre war times, quickly turned into making street lights, involving themselves heavily in the reconstruction programme of the road networks in and around Hanover. It was at this time that my grandfather developed our first illuminated sign in the form of a road bollard. Shaped like a mushroom, it was the first such application in Germany and possibly the world (see history pictures on the adjoining page).
EN: What happened between then and now and how did you become involved?
AK: Aral was our first oil company client back in the 1950’s, a time when the company had stopped producing lamps and concentrated mainly on specialised lighting applications. Aral needed illuminated signs and we were in the market to provide them. At this time my Grandparents were also exploring other lines of new business, such as importing safety belts from Sweden, which at the time proved popular, but activity on this and other non core ideas ceased a long time ago. My Grandfather died when I was 3 years old and my Father died when I was 4, so it was my Grandmother who ran the company directly and then indirectly up until to the mid 1980’s. I joined the company reluctantly in 1988, as a 21 year old, along with my sister Chris, agreeing to work 2 days a week to enable me to continue with my music studies. It was not a good time for the company as our major client BP, which relied on us for producing much of it’s signage in Germany, set up a central European procurement office in London and we did not have the European infrastructure to become involved. As a result we suffered badly. It was only a matter of time before myself and Chris, who finds her strengths in finance and human resources, became attached to the company full time. In the last 17 years, I am proud to say that Kubald GmbH has worked with all the major oil companies including Shell, Esso, BP, Total, OMV, Aral, Texaco and Q8. In 1996 we carried out our first work in Eastern Europe with Petrom from Romania and like many companies inthis business we are now continually looking to the East for new projects.
EN: What is your focus for the future and what piece of experience would you like to pass on to others who may be reading this interview?
AK: We can all learn so much from other companies and should never be afraid to let others in. Today we operate in a global marketplace. If you stay in your shell you will not be able to become a part of the future. I am very pleased to be involved in a global consortium called ECCE, a word meaning to behold in Latin, which originally was set up in 1992 primarily by Hawes signs of the UK and Rousseau of France. The idea was right, to get the key sign manufacturers together, to offer a solution to international companies trading on a european basis, but perhaps the timing may have been wrong and the initiative was left dormant after a few years. In the early 2000’s we took the ECCE concept back to Hawes and Rousseau who subsequently, along with Kubald, became partners in a new ECCE set up and today the consortium has members all over the world. ECCE partners and members collectively offer signage solutions to multi-national companies on a global basis. Recent members to the network include signage providers from China, Russia and Brasil. The focus for the industry must be to concentrate on professional engineering and excellent service and together, with the right companies on board, we can achieve this.
EN: Having walked around the factory here it is clear that the global contract you have from Shell has a great prominence.
AK: Whilst the partners of ECCE, Hawes, Rousseau and ourselves are building a global sales, marketing and service network, if you can call it that, individually we will always have our own manufacturing operations and of course the Shell contract is extremely important to us. From here we manufacture and supply signage applications across the world, for Shell and many others.
EN: If you don’t mind me saying, you seem to be full of ideas and as much enthusiasm to go with them. What new initiatives do you have for the company that we may not have heard of before?
AK: Look out for XEOS Media Solutions! (he smiles) Have you heard of talking shop windows? A window with a touch screen for customers to interact with when they are passing by, or maybe in-store vaporisers emitting the smell of freshly baked bread, to boost sales? It’s very exciting stuff and Kubald GmbH has teamed up with a POS partner network to market a variety of interactive POS applications. We can perhaps demonstrate some of them at the next erpec!
EN: Why not indeed. Thank you, Alex. Good luck with everything in the future. We’ll see you and maybe XEOS Media solutions, at erpec 09 in Italy."