1984 was one of the most important years in the history of our company.
In that period, my father also made a trip to the United States.
He’s always loved reading books on management and strategy (he’s always been self-taught) and he brought along a book by Michel M. Robert on corporate strategy.
He always tells me that he was struck by a simple concept.
The book explained that a company should focus mainly on selling what it does well. Therefore, to understand what it does well, it needs to analyze the profitability of every product it sells.
My father also had the cost data of the machines sold in previous reporting periods with him, so he analyzed them and understood that the only machines on which he made money were those for thicknesses of less than two millimeters, while the others almost always brought losses.
No sooner said than done. During the return trip, he wrote his first business strategy, defining Dallan as a company specializing in easy to use roll forming systems for thin sheet metal.
The most difficult thing for a company that still had little work was to start saying “no” to customers who asked for machines for profiles over two millimeters thick.
“So, you don’t know how to make them?” – they would provoke.
So, my father began replying that the request simply “isn’t part of our production program”. The effect of the decision to focus on a certain type of system was that the company began to get better and better and our market – now a smaller niche - began to expand internationally.