Allit AG Kunststofftechnik

51 well as logistics, transformed and refined our thinking, and forced us to adopt the holistic approach that we at Allit are so proud of today. We extended our professional knowledge into new areas. Always offering the end user added value in the fields of trade, DIY and house- hold became our storage philosophy, and it is with good reason that many of our products reflect this in their names: VarioPlus, EuroPlus, ProfiPlus, McPlus ... What it means to be your own boss. This line of business gave us a greater degree of independence, because we could more fully utilise our machines’ capacity with our own designs, as well as gaining valuable experience from how it felt to be working for ourselves. Being the client and recipient in one, we learnt to be proactive on both sides of the fence, as well as how it felt to design, sell and modify our own market-specific products. In the process we were determined not to follow trends but to create them. Thus we added entrepreneurial courage to our original defining characteristic, curiosity, in the process transforming ourselves from specialists into all-rounders. When Jochen and Karsten Kallinowsky, the sixth generation of the fami- ly since 1840, joined the company in 1998, we decided it was time to become an AG (company limited by shares), at the same time restruc- turing our business segments and setting our course for the future. The language of the ‘dummy salesman’. In the Storage business segment alone we develop an average of ten to 15 new own-brand products every year. As a result, management of the Allit brand has become increasingly important and is something we devote great care to. Our understanding of markets, services, continuously innovative solutions and attrac- tive POS presentations has grown with every new product. Our products had to stand out and be comprehensible without any explana- tion: the language of the dummy salesman, of the products and their presentation, rapidly gained ground, as we simultaneously gained experience. This meant pictograms and pictures on product stickers instead of translations into 25 languages and so forth. Our philosophy of corporate success is based on striking the right balance between product, service and price, not necessarily in that order. If one detail is wrong, the whole system totters. If trust disappears, motivation and respect suffer. Because we are now ourselves responsible for the competitiveness of the mass market in many fields, we know what our customers talk about, what their concerns are (because we share them), what mode of thinking leads to investment, and how impor- tant it is to create market impetus through innovation. That is why we are proud of the recognition we received in 2010, when two Allit AG companies were listed in the TOP 100 most innovative SMEs in Germany.