Allit AG Kunststofftechnik

From yesterday to today. Guided tour 4: Business segments. 44 When it was founded in 1960, Allit was called a plastics factory. Today, over 52 years later, we call it Allit AG Plastics Technology (Kunststoff- technik). This acknowledges the central role played by that material throughout our eventful history. Although only one of our four business segments today bears a name that translates as ‘Plastics Technology’ (the other three are called Storage, SLO and Packaging), our sophisti- cated plastics technology skills and expertise form the greatest common denominator running through all our activities, and plastic is and will remain our favourite hobby horse. In this chapter we tell the story of how a plastics factory that started out chiefly operating as a contract manufacturer was transformed into a full-service provider with its own extensive product range and its own sales and marketing operations. The unofficial subtitle could be: ‘The way we were, what we are and why we’re glad to be that way’. Learning from our customers. We owe our thanks to every single one of our customers. And we don’t mean in monetary terms, but rather for the education they provide us with. Thanks to our customers’ orders we have trodden so much new ground that we can scarcely believe there are still any undiscovered corners of this imaginary landscape. Throughout all this, one thing has remained constant: our curiosity, our desire to conscien- tiously scrutinise things down to the last detail. We want to understand why a particular custo- mer wants to launch Product XY on the market and why it becomes a success or a failure. And this is out of pure self-interest, because if a product is a success it may lead to the inception of a potent market in whose dynamism we can profitably invest. The more we know about markets, develop- ments, trends and counter-trends, structures and dynamics, the more effectively we can pro- vide advice. And that includes for ourselves – at an early stage we developed the ambition to one day be launching our own products onto the marketplace. What is a product good for, how will it be used, how was it developed? We enjoy staying close to our products. We find this easy to do because our customers also manufacture very exciting products and offer exciting services, and in many fields order their ‘unsung heroes’ from us – items that very often improve all our every- day lives. And we are delighted to have made our own contribution.

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