The new structure, new tasks, and new profiles in the Sales deparment
"With a rather messy beginning of the year, all the way to a very strong Q4, we have managed to end 2017 with great results. With this in mind, predictions for 2018 are both positive and exciting!" says Jens Bach Mortensen, CEO at Kvist Industries. With the annual growth of 20+ %, the company today is significantly bigger than it was 4 years ago when Jens Bach became the CEO and co-owner of the company.
A strong growth often results in challenges for employees, suppliers and, last but not least, for the customers. For a too long period, this was the situation at Kvist, especially on the Latvian site in Malpils. A comprehensive restructuring and reorganizing took place, resulting in a raw, more lean, customer- and team-oriented structure. The aim is to establish a faster and more reliable interaction between the customers and Kvist. The structure is still to be strengthened by additional control principles and procedures. These principles are well tested on the Danish site in Årre and will be implemented on a full scale in Latvia. The full implementation will give Kvist further to scale up faster than we have seen before.
The Sales department is structured by the four Key Account Manager teams with employees in both Denmark and Latvia. This secures direct communiation between customers, sales, and production. The volume of incoming orders is strong, the sales strategy is under implementation, and the annual growth is impressive.
2018 came with some changes in the organization. Michael Kvist has decided to change focus and will become CEO and main shareholder in the one-year-old design development company, K2 Design. "We knew that Michael wants to work full-time with new ideas and designs and we were prepared and ready for this decision for some time now. We are glad that he will get the opportunity to do this with K2 Design. We would like to thank Michael for his more than 25-year long contribution to a positive development at Kvist, and we are looking forward to further cooperating with Michael in his new position" says CTO Søren Kvist. Michael stepped down from his position on 31st of January 2018 but will remain within Kvist Industries on several selected tasks.
Key Account Manager, Karsten Clausen retires after almost 30 years of duty on 31st of December 2017. Michael says "It has been a pleasure working together with Karsten, and he has been an excellent ambassador for Kvist, being the customer representative on our factories and the factories representative by the customers".
Although Michael and Karsten are leaving Kvist Industries, both of them will be present at the Stockholm Fair 2018 together with the Kvist team. "We hope that customers, partners, and colleagues will drop by, and say hello to Michael and Karsten," says Jens Bach Mortensen. You will also have the opportunity to meet the sales team, Niels Stokbæk, Hejne Madsen, Santa Staskevica, and Viesturs Vikse. They will be supported by CTO Søren Kvist and CEO Jens Bach Mortensen. As always, we are at the fair to service and support our customers. More to that, at the upcoming fair, we will introduce the Kvist Business Lounge, where you are more than welcome to use our facilities. For booking, please contact our staff and book with the team, if you want to use the facilities.
We are looking forward to saying "Hello" to you in Stockholm.