RM: You're a relatively young company, founded in 2019, what was the most challenging part of the beginning?
Petr Vlcek: Well, we actually started from scratch. The factory used to repair diesel locomotives, so there was some railway history there, but in a different segment to us. We decided that we would only manufacture freight wagons, not repair them. And as a new railcar manufacturer, the most important thing for us was to get to market in a very short time.
RM: How do you penetrate a relatively large market, as you say, in a very short time?
Petr Vlcek: We chose what we now call the "punk style" because there were two possible ways: the first was to prepare everything, to set up all the processes, to fine-tune everything down to the last detail, which would have taken a year or two. Then slowly start production and reach out to customers. We decided to go the other way and start production as soon as possible and then catch up with everything during the production process. We were able to license the cars, which was very important because we didn't have our own designs.
RM: How long would the approval process take without leasing licences?
Petr Vlcek: To give you an idea, to get a car approved means you start inventing, you start drawing, then you make a prototype, you get approved, so it takes two years to get a car to market, to get it into production. So we bought the licences and within the first four months we set up the factory. After four months we started production and in the fifth month we actually sold the first car, so it was fantastic.
RM: Did you have any experience with this "punk style" before?
Petr Vlcek: That whole first year was actually incredible in that when you're building something, I'd never experienced building something on a greenfield site before, you actually always have some milestones, something to celebrate, the team is so pumped up. So it was in order: first line, first wagon, first invoice, first tank wagon, first customer, first trip. It was obviously a wonderful time. But the bad thing was that in 2020 the covid started, so we started the factory and the covid storm came. Fortunately, we actually managed to go to France just before the covid and got our first customer to order tanker wagons from us. From today's perspective, I can see that's actually one of the most difficult things - finding that first customer. I mean, everybody in the market already knew us, but we were a new company. So even I would have said to myself, if I were a customer, I'm rooting for you guys, you're my friends, hang in there, but I'll wait a year.
So it wasn't easy to convince somebody, without completely undercutting them on price or motivating them in any way, that your first wagon was going to be great when you weren't completely convinced yourself because all the processes weren't quite in place. But we managed to get a Slovakian customer Tenutado for the container wagons and a French company, Atir-Rail, for the tank wagons. At that time, the negotiations were still based on a face-to-face meeting. I think that if it had been a little later, it would have been much more complicated with Teams and other online platforms. But gradually, in that first year of 2020, we added production lines, we prepared ourselves for growth and we produced, we sold over 300 cars, which was good.
RM: Did you manage to get investors?
Petr Vlcek: The interesting thing was that we drew up a plan of how the factory would work, and the investors invested on that basis. For the first two years we worked on the basis of this plan, in the sense that we would produce a car and sell it immediately. So we've managed to predict and predict well. And that was at a time when everybody was shaking their heads, because to make one car and say we're going to make 800 cars the next year, everybody said we were crazy. But we did it, we tripled our sales in the second year. We made 890 cars and sold 890 cars. So all of a sudden we really managed to become the third largest manufacturer in Europe and we started to make money. We had a big turnover - over two billion crowns, and by 2021 we were employing about 700 people.
RM: But there are risks with rapid growth, what was the most difficult?
Petr Vlcek: At that point, it was very important and difficult not to exaggerate all the things. There were a lot of people coming in, and when you hire a lot of people, I don't want to generalise at all, but you also hire the wrong people and then you have to let them go. Because in the meantime things are going wrong, there are complaints, there's a lot of things like that. And of course any consultant will tell you that there's a risk of overheating the money, the capital, fortunately we have very strong shareholders, so they've backed us in this. But overheating those brains is a bigger risk than overheating the capital, I think. You can plan for the money, but it's been difficult with these people. But we've managed to stabilise them.
RM: Your employees come from many different countries. How have you dealt with this?
Petr Vlcek: We actually have almost no Czechs in production. Nymburk is not exactly the ideal location, we are between Kolin and Mlada Boleslav, so the people are mainly in the automotive industry. The work in our company is demanding, so we actually have 11 nationalities in our company, and of course it's difficult because you have to respect the people, respect the culture, which again, I don't want to say it in a stupid way, I don't want to look pompous, but some stupid people often tend to wave at the foreigners, which is difficult. There are things you have to sort out somehow, so we try to communicate with these people, even with the Czechs, somehow. It's just that very few of us would want to be in the situation of a guy from India or some Asian country coming all the way to the Czech Republic. An unfamiliar environment, a culture he doesn't fully understand. He earns money here, works six days a week, rests on Sunday and goes back to work on Monday. He doesn't really have anything else besides his job, so we've taken care of that too. Like we have special changing rooms for Asians, like they cook their own food, they smell different, they just have it different, so we've addressed all that, so I'm very happy that it's all worked out.
The second part of the interview with Petr Vlcek, CEO of NYMWAG, about changes in the wagon market and other topics will be published soon.
