ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine — When the Grolitsch family from Austria opened a factory making ironing boards in Ukraine 15 years ago, they couldn’t imagine that one day they would make windsurfing boards for the world’s top athletes.
In late 2002, Erich Grolitsch and his sons Nils and Tobias chose Ukraine over China as the location for their new business. They opened a factory in Zhytomyr, a city of 266,000 people about 130 kilometers west of Kyiv. Over time, they have become Europe’s leading producer of ironing boards, drying racks and step ladders. Today, Eurogold Industries manufactures 3.5 million units annually and exports abroad some 85 percent of its output.
But a few years ago Grolitsch brothers decided to venture into sports equipment.
“My brother Tobias is a passionate windsurfer,” Nils Grolitsch, 47, says. “Six or seven years ago he attended a boat show in Germany where he met Patrik Diethelm, one of the top windsurfers in the world. They chatted over beers, and Tobias offered to make Patrik some windsurfing boards. A year later we got a call from Patrik.”
Swiss athlete Diethelm and his wife Karin Jaggi, also a successful windsurfer, founded their PATRIK windsurfing board brand in 2010. Today, their multinational team of professional windsurfers has been victorious in almost every championship and tournament on their hollow windsurfing boards made in Ukraine.
Diethelm designs his boards himself. Each board is handmade and goes through several stages: from cutting and shaping to lamination and coloring. “Working for such a famous brand requires accuracy and attention to detail. Every piece is hand-built and must be identical,” Grolitsch says, walking the Kyiv Post through the entire process. Today, his factory is making the Formula and Slalom lightweight models.
Apart from professional hollow boards, Eurogold has recently begun to make boards for the mass market made with polystyrene foam.
Although windsurfing boards comprise only 5 to 7 percent of the total production at Eurogold, Grolitsch sees bigger opportunities in the sports equipment market than in consumer goods.
Nils Grolitsch talks about his windsurf board business at his Zhytomyr-based factory Eurogold Industries on May 23. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Working in Ukraine
Eurogold recently doubled the size of its premises in the outskirts of Zhytomyr city to 80,000 square meters. Grolitsch says he sees his business continuing to be based in Ukraine, due to the country’s proximity to Europe, good logistics routes, and abundance of raw materials.
With 1,200 workers, the factory is currently one of the major employers in the region. And, like many other businesses in Ukraine, it is having trouble finding enough workers, especially shop floor workers and young people with technical education, Grolitsch says.
The people are what he values the most in Ukraine, although he grumbles about the short-term thinking of Ukrainians. “They want a quick profit, and this mentality really has to change.”
At the height of his 15-year experience of running a successful business in Ukraine, Grolitsch has some advice to foreign entrepreneurs who consider investing in the country.
“Never pay a cent of bribes and do not come here thinking you can do whatever you want,” he says. “There are strict rules you have to obey.”
