On Wednesday, we visited the elevator factory of Kone in Hyvinkää. In Hyvinkää factory, Kone manufactures elevator motors and more special elevator cars manufactured in small batches.
As a company, Kone is naturally one of the most interesting ones in Finland. No other company can say that they are the market leader in China, while Kone has had an approximately 20 per cent annual growth rate already for many years.
Thus, perhaps the most interesting discussions of our visit to Kone were related to the growth rate. In Hyvinkää, we were told that a strong corporate culture is the core of business success, and we were pondering on how a common culture can be developed and maintained in the market where the company is growing so rapidly.
The position of Kone in the Chinese market seems very interesting also in other respects. Firstly, as the market leader, Kone cannot choose market segments where it competes, but it has to be practically the best in all the segments. Secondly, the fragmentation of the Chinese market will most likely determine much of the future challenges of Kone: we can no longer say that there is one low-end product, for example, but low-end products are divided into several subcategories in terms of customer expectations. Due to these developments, Kone will most likely continue to have hands full of work in China and it all seems to go well.
In the following blog post, we will tell you what we discussed with the President of the Republic later on Tuesday.