It is a beautiful
morning in beautiful Höganäs, when I roll in to the parking lot of Gullberg
Jansson, a cleantech company within the swimming pool and spa industry. I park
Galaxersomsliterdinabraxer* and enter the door.
– Hi! I assume you are
here to meet Alex? Please wait a moment.
I sit down in the sofa, browsing
through a leaflet from a French waterpark, when I am suddenly asked:
– So, you are Erik, I
suppose? Hi, I’m Alex, nice to meet you.
Alex Molvin is an SSE alumnus,
graduated in 1999, and since 2012 CEO of Gullberg Jansson. I follow him into a
meeting room and immediately ask him to take it all from the beginning. And so
he does.
– I grew up in Älmhult,
since my father used to work at IKEA. He later became store manager of IKEA in
Malmö, so then we moved.
As a kid, Alex quite
soon realized his potential for creating business opportunities and
negotiating.
– I was selling
newspapers and strawberries. I think I had a talent for it, and quite soon I
started come up with deals, such as ”2 for 1” and the like.
When Alex was 18, he
moved to Stockholm for studies at SSE. After two years, he got a scholarship
for one year of studies in the US.
– I went to San Francisco
to study entrepreneurship, and it was amazing. I had the best entrepreneurship
professors in the world at the time, and they had been researching the topic
for more than 50 years over there, whereas no one did it in Sweden.
When Alex moved back to
Stockholm again, SSE launched its first course in entrepreneurship.
– We were supposed to
come up with a business idea. I did something with a monopoly-like game, but I
never realized the idea. A couple of years later, I saw that similar things
started popping up here and there. In the same class was also Ola Lauritzson,
and his idea was to start a sushi chain, but he did not realize it either,
Remember that this was in 1996, before the hype. It is quite interesting, when
you think of his career since then.
I tell him that Ola
Lauritzson used to be my mentor.
– Oh, that’s a
coincidence!
During the San Fransisco
years, Alex worked for Universum-owned Jobline, evaluating business plans. And
the interest for business plans continued.
– Most people at SSE were
aiming for the big banks. If you were ”out of the box”, then you aimed for a consultancy
or auditing job. No one talked about entrepreneurship. I wanted to do something
else; I wanted to create something on my own.
Said and done: After
graduating from SSE, Alex founded E-chron – consisting of a business plan
competition (E-challenge, similar to today’s Venture Cup), a magazine (Core),
and entrepreneurship-related market research. He did this together with Niclas
Carlsson, today at Founders Alliance. I tell him that I used to work with
Niclas.
– Oh, that’s a
coincidence! When I was interviewing for the magazine, similar to what you are
doing now, I met a man called Jan Nilsson, the founder of Switchcore.
Later on, it would prove
to be an important meeting: After a couple of years with E-chron, Jan called.
– He had noticed my
business plan knowledge and wanted me to be part of his next challenge: ITACT.
The idea was to invest in new high-tech businesses, first and foremost from
Sweden’s engineering schools. We raised a fund of 400 MSEK and founded seven
companies between 1999 and 2004.
One of the companies
ITACT founded built a computer chip factory that was funded by CISCO. But
during the crash, things changed rapidly.
– The whole market just
disappeared, and we hade to take action, saving what could be saved. Some
companies were sold, others we shut down.
One of ITACT’s investors
then asked Alex to join the private equity company Business Improver Group.
– It was rough times,
and we did not really succeed. However, they thought I did a pretty good job
anyway, so I first became deputy CEO. It was all a bit messy; the former CEO
was the first person in Sweden to be convicted of insider dealing. So I fired
him and took over as CEO myself.
Business Improver Group
then changed name into Optegra, and was listed on First North. It later changed
name into Pilum, a company which stock was halted as late as this week. In
2006, Termoregulator, which was one of Optegra’s businesses, was spun off and
became Capilon AB. Alex became CEO of Capilon and was at the helm until 2011,
when the responsibility it became too large to bear.
– I hit the wall. It’s
as simple as that. Capilon owned three other companies that were quite large.
Capilon developed from zero in 2006 to a turnover of Euro 64 million $
in 2011, and had operations in Sweden, China, USA, Singapore and Italy.
– We were a very
”anorectic” company, with only me and one more person working in the parent
company. It was not the hours that killed me, it was the responsibility. It
gets very lonely ”at the top”. Sure, you can say that about being a CEO as
well, but as an owner you don’t have a team to share things with. You get
invited to one Christmas party, and that’s it.
To recover from the
experiences with Capilon, Alex stepped down from all responsibility and signed
up for Baravara and
their program Training for life during one and a half year.
– I tried almost all
types of therapy you can think of. And a lot of meditation as well. I tried to
figure out who I was, and what I wanted to do. Whether entrepreneurship really
was something for me. But I realized that – hey, this is what I like to do,
this is what makes me ticking. But from that moment on I needed to do it in a
different way than before.
In 2012, the position as
CEO for the Gullberg Jansson opened up. Alex had been shareholder in the
company since 2007.
– I bought Jansson out,
five years earlier. When I took over, the company was in bad shape with no
growth and making a loss of around ten percent per year. This felt like right
project for me.
But to turn the company
around, a lot had to be done.
– One of the founders
had started practicing Falun Gong. I think that is great, but when he tried
converting clients during meetings and I had to apologize and collect his
flyers, it had gone too far.
Gullberg Jansson is a cleantech
company sells heat pumps and pool covers o retailers and partners. Among the end customers is Skara Sommarland. The
heat pumps take energy from the air and heats up the water, and that makes it save
60-80% more energy than regular pumps. The pool covers also has an
energy-saving function, since it works as a greenhouse.
– I argue for my
hypothesis about the ”the lazy man”, and that it has a big part in the success
of the roof. You see, it is very convenient; opening up the roof takes a couple
of seconds. And you can prolong the season, since the water stays warm.
Alex proudly shows me
their latest product in the pool cover segment and how it works. But then he
gets serious again. Soon after shouldering the role as CEO at Gullberg Jansson,
Alex received the news about him having Hodgkin’s disease, i.e. cancer.
– I temporarily stepped
down from the CEO role. After a while, I was working approximately one day per
week. You get tired of watching American action movies all day long. But, of
course, there was also a lot of time for meditation.
I ask him how this
period affected him.
– Cancer is one of the
best things you can experience, given that you survive. You learn incredibly
much about yourself, and you learn how to appreciate yourself more. When I reflected
on my immediate reaction when I was told I had cancer, I realized that I only
thought about my role as economic breadwinner of the family, and as support to
my children when they grow up. It had nothing to do about me or that I was sad
for myself. That’s an insight.
The treatment lasted for
one year.
– Of course it was
painful with radiation therapy, surgery and chemotherapy. But that’s just
physical pain. You become less afraid of things in life, and suddenly that big
meeting at work is not as frightening as before. I think that everyone should experience
cancer – but only once.
Since Alex took over
Gullberg Jansson in 2012 the turnover has increased from 20 to 50 MSEK, and
they are now profitable again. Today they are twice the workforce and have a 35%
market share in Sweden. I ask him what he did that changed the situation.
– I believe it is
crucial to focus on the employees and their wellbeing. I have a large therapist
network after hitting the wall, which I also utilize in the company. Speaking
of which: We are also participating in an SSE study about business and
meditation together with Lasse Lychnell.
I tell him that Lasse
used to be my thesis supervisor.
– Oh, that’s a
coincidence!
Gullberg Jansson has a
number of watchwords they aim to live by: Joy/energy, creativity, and
belongingness.
– I believe in having
fun at work. Some people don’t. Then it is natural that these people are automatically
discarded. Creativity is especially important when the business is going bad.
Finally, belongingness is extremely important. Everyone has to be on the same
page. By starting asking ourselves questions, we get the same view of a
problem.
It has been a long
meeting at Gullberg Jansson, and we have almost only talked about the past. Of
course I have to ask Alex what’s in the pipeline.
– We are recruiting, but
it’s difficult to find a good candidate. Preferably it should be a salesperson
with technical background that fluently speaks German and French. And that
wants to move to Höganäs. Or wait, Helsingborg! We are moving into a brand new
office space in Helsingborg. It’s going to be really cool, it even has a
showroom. It proves that we are a serious company. And then there is growth, of
course – both organically and through acquisitions.
I also have to ask him
about his own future. So I do.
– So far, I have changed
job around every fifth year, either because I am tired of it, or that I hit the
wall. But this time it feels different. I like the business, love having a
team, and we have a lot of cool things in front of us.
I realize that I also
have a lot of cool things in front of me – such as the ferry to Denmark. I
thank Alex for the time, grab a banana on the way out and head for Helsingborg.
* Yep, that is the name
of my bike as a result of a Facebook poll.
No comments:
Post a Comment