A platform for growth

Newsroom 31/10/2011 | 11:00

With a market share of 20 percent in 2010, eight bias points in Romania, three in Bulgaria and one in the Republic of Moldova, Stefan Ponea intends to achieve a 30 percent market share on the regional market – Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia – next year.

Anda Sebesi

For Stefan Ponea, CEO and managing partner at Industrial Access, a company specialized in providing mobile aerial working platforms, the entrepreneurial path started in 2005. At the age of 28, he and three associates decided to set up their own business. The initial investment was about USD 3,000 and the idea came from Ponea himself. They launched the venture with two junior workers because there were few specialists in this field in Romania at that time and some of them had already been recruited by an Italian player.

Ponea’s educational and professional background helped him a lot in building Industrial Access, as he had taken courses at the marketing faculty at ASE Bucharest and in psycho-sociology at Spiru Haret University. The entrepreneur also worked from 1997 to 2005 at Bomax, a group of companies, where he rose from PC operator to division manager. “I worked in various departments such as sales, logistics, financial-accountancy and restructuring-development.

When I was hired, back in 1997, the company had five employees. Eight years later it posted a turnover of EUR 30 million and had 450 employees,” remembers Ponea.
The idea to set up Industrial Access came in 2002 when he had the opportunity to sell equipment used to work at great depth. “That importer wanted a margin of about 100 percent. I tried to negotiate but finally I decided to import directly without any middleman. Things came naturally: research on the internet, identifying international producers, contacts, comparative analysis between technical and commercial conditions, a distribution contract, certification for introducing these pieces of equipment on the market, then the first sale. All these were part of the first stage of the project,” says the managing partner. The company earned over EUR 2 million from selling equipment and a profit margin of about 30 percent in the first year of this activity.
Ponea adds that Bomax’s activity extended in time from selling nacelles to industrial trucks, excavators and generators.

But be believes the really valuable idea came in the spring of 2003 when he decided to rent equipment at a margin of 200 percent a year. “Renting construction equipment had a better chance of future development on the medium and long term than sales activity,” he says. But the CEO of the Bomax group did not want to invest in this type of business scheme and decided to stop Ponea and his team from doing it in 2005. “Despite this, the most important thing for me was that I managed to leave something behind me: the division of construction equipment was still working and we all created a market for renting mobile aerial working equipment,” says Ponea.

Asked why he decided to set up this type of firm, the managing partner says that he had always wanted to do things that no one had done before, break new ground, optimize processes and do his job perfectly. “To rent construction equipment in general and mobile aerial working platforms in particular offered me great potential for development and I fully benefited from it.
Currently, Industrial Access is the sole representative and distributor for such equipment in Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria,” says Ponea.

One of the most difficult moments the business has faced so far was when Ponea’s former associates chose not to respect their investment and financial agreements and asked for dividends, jeopardizing the future development of his company. “But this persuaded a serious investor, BAF, to buy the majority stake, creating the premises to propel the company to regional level. BAF was the best and most reliable solution for Industrial Access to develop further and has provided the necessary resources for the past four years,” says the businessman.
He adds that if he started another company he would be more prudent in choosing his business partners.

Furthermore, one of the major challenges his firm is facing is that the market is permanently changing, while information rapidly becomes outdated. “In such conditions if you don’t act instantly, you may lose the deal,” says Ponea. And this seems to be very important as the competition in this field is fierce. According to him, the market evolved from two-three players in 2003 to over 40 at the beginning of the current crisis. “Despite this, a few companies have gone out of business, and it is likely that others will follow suit by the end of this year,” he predicts.

anda.sebesi@business-review.ro

Company profile

Industrial Access
2010 turnover (estimated): EUR 4.6 million

2011 turnover (H1): EUR 3.3 million

Number of employees: 40

Initial investment: USD 3,000

Estimated investment at end of June 2011: EUR 18 million

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