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01/06/2016

This was 2015!

In keeping with tradition, I would like to say a few words about last year, after having also given our financial partners the final documents during our annual...

In keeping with tradition, I would like to say a few words about last year, after having also given our financial partners the final documents during our annual results meeting today.

The group turnover increased by 25%, to EUR 173 million, the EBIT to EUR 4.5 million (by 15% after all). Turnover has thus more than doubled since 2011. Both values lie significantly over budget, as usual. :) It is also nice that we could continue to increase our capital; the ratio exceeds 26% and furthermore continuously builds upon itself.

On average we engaged 200 employees in 2015, and we are further expanding, particularly in logistics and sales. In 2015 we processed 153,000 shipments, totaling more than 400,000 packages and pallets. The average order value surpassed the 1,000 euro mark for the first time.

2016 is already marked by continued strong growth. To support this we are executing two new construction measures in 2016, to expand our 24-hour logistics. As a result, several of our departments will be relocated within the premises, in order to make space for approximately 3,000 new pallet spaces.

My thanks goes to all employees, customers and suppliers. We continue to work hard to expand our position!

24/05/2016

The perfect Bloody Mary comes from China!

I admit, I do enjoy a good glass of wine. But I never ever drink the hard stuff - not even cocktails, because usually they contain "that type" of alcohol....

I admit, I do enjoy a good glass of wine. But I never ever drink the hard stuff - not even cocktails, because usually they contain "that type" of alcohol. Even our suppliers, some of whom try with all of their might, have been unsuccessful in getting me to drink a schnapps after hours. You know, I actually wanted to write another blog entry about one of our joint suppliers, but I am in a good mood today.

Alex, the head bartender at the "Penthouse Bar" in the Grand Hyatt Shenzhen (the best hotel in the world), went against these principles and imposed a cocktail upon me, which I could not deprive my readers of.

After the recipe for "Sam's Chili con Carne" got the most likes and requests, the time has come again for a recipe.

This recipe resembles a "Bloody Mary" and it sort of is. But you can in no way compare it to pre-packaged tomato juice, store-brand vodka and tabasco - tomato juice and vodka mixed 1:1, like for Hemingway in Harry's New York Bar. No, no, any drink that takes 30 minutes to prepare is well worth the wait. Supposedly, it's even healthy. :)

Here's how:

2 cl vodka Belvedere Put 30 green Szechuan peppercorns into the bottle and let them sit for a half year before using the vodka.

6 cl tomato juice Roast 25 cherry tomatoes (with the skins) in a pan with a little olive oil. Quickly cool them to room temperature and then puree them.

Add to this celery salt, freshly cracked black pepper (with the Jarltech pepper mill, of course, see the Jarltech Bonus Shop!). No ice, please. The juice is watery enough, and lukewarm is just the right temperature for it. Thanks to the tomato seeds and chopped up peels you automatically chew after each sip, which brings the pepper to life on your taste buds.

In case anyone is thinking of asking whether you can make the 3-minute version in the blender: forget it! Drink your homemade banana shakes instead!

Cheers!

13/05/2016

Thank you for the compliments!

We frequently host events in Usingen, such as a technical training from Honeywell this week....

We frequently host events in Usingen, such as a technical training from Honeywell this week. As marvelous as the technology of our vendors is though, we still try to impress our customers each time by paying attention to the littlest details… not only with a company tour by the owner himself and with excellent cuisine, but also with a "personal touch". In this case, a "Head of Research and Development" from one of the prominent system houses asked how he could travel to Usingen using public transportation (and he was coming from quite a distance). He would be old by the time he arrived.

My gut feeling said immediately: "Send the good man a chauffeur and a limousine, and pick him up!" This was in no way intended to impress anyone – the question that I had no immediate answer to tickled me, and I spontaneously decided to solve the problem "Jarltech-style". Note: Every one of our employees would have reacted exactly the same way. See the customer's feedback on the same day, at 23:00h:

--- Dear Mr. Spranger,

First and foremost I wish to thank you for the friendly transport service from Mr. Kollek. I have never experienced such exclusive customer service anywhere else.

Additionally, I wish to thank you for the successful Honeywell seminar. Thanks to it, I gained good insight into the Honeywell product portfolio.

I truly enjoyed the Showroom as well, where I could have a look at the other products and convince myself firsthand from their quality.

Unfortunately, you were no longer present after the tour, so I was unable to personally thank you for everything.

I am very impressed by the self-sufficient, familiar and cordial structure of your company. As someone who appreciates fine cuisine I was particularly positively surprised by the unusual giveaways, and I look forward to trying some of the recipes myself.

I look forward to a good cooperation and wish you steadily increasing turnover, as well as a successful remaining week. ---

What can I learn from this?

First, to be approachable as the owner of a company is a good thing. Second, after giving a tour of our company it would be beneficial for me to remain present for a while longer. See you soon at an event at Jarltech!

09/02/2016

Banknote counters for managing your own poverty :)

At 1,000 orders per day, there are unfortunately also occasionally times when a customer does not want to (or cannot) pay his bill.

...

At 1,000 orders per day, there are unfortunately also occasionally times when a customer does not want to (or cannot) pay his bill.

What makes me really suspicious is the case involving a company that ordered multiple banknote counters for Euro banknotes with us - and then 14 days later we received the notice that they are insolvent.

Um, what exactly did they want to count? :) Or was that a concrete reference to the insolvency judge that senior management wanted to know at the very least exactly how much money they could settle with?

22/01/2016

Millennials: No more desks in hotel rooms!

I cannot seem to find the sense of it: The hotel chain Marriott has announced it will remove all desks from its 500 hotels worldwide....

I cannot seem to find the sense of it: The hotel chain Marriott has announced it will remove all desks from its 500 hotels worldwide. No, it is not April Fool’s Day, and Marriott would still like to continue welcoming business travelers.

So, what do you do? You ask your favorite search engine and learn that this is an idea of ​​Marriott Design Labs. The reason is because the "Millennials" do not like desks, but would rather "hang out" in their room than sit at a table.

I enjoy "hanging out", but don’t these "Millennials" (who were born somewhere between 1990 and 2000) have to work on business trips? Or possibly set down their laptop to recharge? No, says Marriott, because "Generation Y" only uses smartphones and tablets, preferably while “hanging out" on the sofa. Printed seminar documents, files or something of the like is so 80s. If you take a moment to look around the room, you will see that there is still a minimalistic "coffee table" in front of the sofa, too low to work on it or to eat. So does that mean that room service food can only go on the bed? Sitting on the sofa would not work with me, since my laptop, iPad and iPhone are charging there, in addition to my briefcase, because I might secretly want to pull out a file (which I now do find embarrassing, because that's obviously completely old-fashioned). If you are not alone in the room, the problem multiplies.

I think Marriott is shooting itself in the foot and simply followed the design people who were already of the opinion that a bathroom can be separated in a hotel room only by a pane of glass, and that the tub should stand beside the bed in front of the window. This is certainly very great on a honeymoon, but when two colleagues are sharing a room, does that mean that one has to wait in the hallway when the other bathes? I imagine it is also interesting when a spouse has to get up early and the other tries to go back to sleep and relax in the harsh bathroom light, with hairdryer noises in the background.

Suits are also “out" now, nobody needs a landline anymore, and instead of television there is YouTube. Accordingly, wardrobes, ironing boards, telephones and televisions may also disappear from the rooms. Instead of a coffee maker I suggest caffeine pills, and, because light bulbs are obsolete (thanks to the lighting provided by the tablet), the entire electrical installation is rendered unnecessary. Windows are a waste, since they only interfere when reading the small screens.

Should the number of bookings decline, I say it's the fault of the guests who are just not cool enough.

31/12/2015

Thank you for 2015!

Our team worked great in 2015: Our order intake grew by 26% compared to 2014, and the total order volume of 183 million euros speaks for itself....

Our team worked great in 2015: Our order intake grew by 26% compared to 2014, and the total order volume of 183 million euros speaks for itself. We handled 153.000 deliveries this year, and about 15.000 RMA cases. I am very proud of the Jarltech team, which contributed to this success on all levels. I also say thank you to our customers and vendors, who helped with their loyalty. Also in 2015, in case something went wrong, we were able to find good solutions with our partners. This night all counters go back to zero, but we take the challenge and are happy to work with all of you in 2016!

09/12/2015

Conference calls - work should be fun!

So, who besides me has absolutely no desire for endless conference calls?...

So, who besides me has absolutely no desire for endless conference calls? You know the drill: everyone says something (just for the sake of saying something), dogs can be heard barking in the background from other participants, and others are participating in multiple conferences at the same time and, of course, confuse what is being talked about in each case.

If it is not an important call, yet you just have to be there again, just because you have to, then you might as well make a joke out of it. In most cases, at least two participants should be involved and conspire together.

You don’t have to surf long to find sounds for downloading. For example, the mooing of a cow, or the approach of a local train at the Boston station. Rooster crowing or snoring sounds are also very popular. Simply play these sounds during the conf call from time to time, and the colleague who has ideally allegedly dialed in via mobile phone has the task of coming up with good excuses for the various background noises. "Der Spiegel" recently wrote so beautifully about telephone conferences, under the title "And suddenly in the background you hear the toilet flushing”. It’s just that someone can, of course, also do this intentionally. :)

What is really good is playing inappropriate music, let it be a hit song or even the theme music from Star Trek. Then you both repeatedly each accuse an unsuspecting third party, and ask them to please switch off the car radio because it is interfering with the call. This can be quite entertaining, especially when competitors are participating in the call. They often cannot bluntly defend themselves, and suddenly you receive text messages in addition to the conf call, asking if you have completely gone bonkers.

A well-known game is “Bingo”: you give five notions to your partners in crime, for example, "monkey, sesame bread, a state of war, wig and snail", and these words must then be incorporated into the discussion. That's not so easy when it comes to the fiscalization of POS systems in Austria. Try it once.

John Lefevre (of the Goldman Sachs elevator blog) writes in his book that he used to always enjoy dialing in ten minutes earlier from another line. Most systems require you to say your company’s name, and in his case, being from the banking world, he would say, for example, "Deutsche Bank" (the name of a competitor). In case an unpleasant requirement came from a customer, he could simply hang up. The conference voice would then announce “Deutsche Bank has hung up and left the conference call”, which regularly lead to hasty justifications by competitors (not a good impression with the customer, and then what’s really stupid is when the competitor has simply switched his phone to mute, is taking a shower and does not notice anything).

And that's why there is hardly videoconferencing, because everyone would be forced to really focus on the conference and work would stop. Nothing is worse than getting a FaceTime call from the boss, causing you to move the wineglass and the ash tray from your desk in a panic. Plus, you cannot even shave undisturbed during the conversation. At the latest then it becomes obvious that you are more often to be found at the pool than in the conference room during strenuous technical seminars in Las Vegas.

In fact, most conf calls usually end with one of the participants being made to take minutes on the “decision criteria”, which should have been discussed and decided upon during the call itself.

But, we would rather make a joke out of it.

23/10/2015

I'm staying CEO at Jarltech!

For nearly 25 years now, I have been the owner of and CEO at Jarltech....

For nearly 25 years now, I have been the owner of and CEO at Jarltech. This week, already three human resource agencies -- headhunters, really -- called me to hire me away from Jarltech. This is very flattering, especially because the offers were quite enticing ones mostly at big American corporations in our industry. They also had nice locations!

Still, dear recruitment consultants, please briefly inform yourselves about who you are calling. And if I were to accept a job, I would only take one as CEO at our direct competition, and only under the condition to remain the lone shareholder of Jarltech. Let's see who is going to profit then :)

23/10/2015

Jarltech put their trust in Scotland Yard: Frauds raiding in auditor's disguise ...

Watch out! Unfortunately, we recently fell for a ploy that is not entirely unknown in the IT mail order business....

Watch out! Unfortunately, we recently fell for a ploy that is not entirely unknown in the IT mail order business. Because we thought that our specialised hardware is not that easy to fence in large quantities, we maybe were a little too careless.

A big international auditing company - one of the "big Four" - and more precisely their technologies department in England won a project for Panasonic hardware and entrusted us with the delivery. Of course, a credit limit was available within three minutes.

After several weeks of negotiations, our English sales team accepted the order, which came on genuine letterhead with the correct VAT ID and signed by an authorised representative. The delivery address was of course not the main office in London, but a warehouse in the outskirts where software was to be installed on the devices. The goods were delivered and the receipt was even signed.

When dunning letters were sent later on, the auditing company was quite taken aback: the employee with whom we e-mailed does not exist. Neither does the delivery address. We then learned from Scotland Yard that goods worth millions were delivered to this address within a couple of days and are untraceable until now.

There is no sign whatsoever of our Panasonic Toughbooks, which seem to be easier to fence than cash drawers. Our credit insurance will not pay, because there was no payment default, but a fraud. The auditing company is upset, but that does not help me.

Leads will appear later. Some laptop is bound to break down at some point and the unsuspecting customer will send his laptop to Panasonic for repair. This means either that the customer was so credulous to buy such goods - my goods -, or I win and get a broken laptop, which will probably not even be up to date by then.

Fortunately, the financial damage is bearable. But we did rethink some of our processes. We deliver to different addresses all the time for our resellers. This is our daily business. However, with first orders and before payment was received, Jarltech will verify delivery addresses much more strictly with the purchaser, and especially: the order itself.

In fact the scheme was well done: even in its demeanour, the auditing company's pretend subcompany was so confusing and complicated as one would expect from one of the "big four". :) At first, even the auditing company itself said it was their order, but that the employee had left the company in the meantime. It took them weeks to find out that the fraud not only did not work for them "any longer" but rather never did ...

All the time while corresponding with the frauds, their e-mail address just was not "auditing-company.com", for example, like the parent company's, but rather "auditing-company-technologies.com". At first glance, this seems logical, but it nevertheless is a completely different domain and probably registered on Bert and Ernie in the Caribbean.

I can therefore give this advice: check which of your products might be on the line. And concerning first orders with differing delivery addresses: hands off! Or check closely. Finally, do not ask for confirmation at the phone number stated on the falsified letterhead ...

Well, let us hope Sherlock Holmes is doing a good job at Scotland Yard and puts the frauds behind bars. Or I will go and get them!