On December 4 the English version of "Warsaw Voice" weekly published under this title a large report concerning the history of Nowy Styl Group.The article you can find below.Jerzy Krzanowski just turned 35. At work, he wears jeans and a polo shirt. Many people in Krosno still remember his schoolboy excesses he was always up to something. Adam, Jerzy’s brother, four years older and more level-headed, has only recently agreed to move into a real manager’s office. Neither of them graduated from a school of management but the Nowy Styl company they established 13 years ago is now the largest chair manufacturer in Europe with 7 million chairs produced yearly and 250 million euros in annual sales. For many young Poles the early 1990s marked a period of searching trying to achieve success in London, the Netherlands, Sweden or the United States. Podkarpacie region, where Krosno is located, has special ties with the United States. Many people had already left this area in search of a better life, dollars and prospects. In 1990, curiosity and eagerness to earn money drove Adam, then a geodesy student at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, to New York. “I was 23 and had nothing to lose. I was looking for an idea for life. In New York, like most Poles, I landed up in Greenpoint. I stayed with several people, mainly from our region. It was a real school of life, language and business. For quite a long time I couldn’t find a job. I had actually decided to go back home when I came across an ad from a small producer of restaurant chairs, Wythe. This was my first encounter with chairs and the Stern family,” said Adam.Before Adam found a job in the Sterns’ factory in New York, he and his brother had traded in clothes imported from Turkey. They had been able to persuade even thrifty neighbors to help them with their business. The neighbors would lend them  money they had saved for a rainy day. Then the brothers’ paths diverged. Adam left for New York, while curiosity led Jerzy to Israel. “I landed in Tel Aviv with only my backpack. The heat was unbearable. I spent the first nights on a balcony at my friend’s place. I walked the streets looking for a job. Everything was new and interesting to me. Finally, I found a job in a restaurant. What I saw there was beyond belief. It was a very modern restaurant with catering. The work organization was perfect. This is where I realized how important work organization, the knowledge of all stages of production and quality control is,” said Jerzy. After two years in Israel, he returned home and opened his own café. $20,000 for the beginningAt the beginning of 1992, the “prodigal sons” returned to their hometown. Adam talked enthusiastically about the small factory producing metal chairs. He was trying to convince his brother that chairs with metal legs had a chance of becoming a real market success in Poland. During this period, no one manufactured such chairs in Poland. The dollars they had earned, the initial capital necessary to start their own business, was waiting on the table. They had an idea and confidence that they had found a niche for themselves. They wanted to try.Adam’s American employers, Henry and Roland Stern (father and son), agreed to go into partnership and support the business with capital and financial guarantees. The brothers took over a 60-percent stake, the Sterns’ interest amounted to 40 percent. This is how Nowy Styl was established. The beginnings were modest. During the first months, the company employed a few people and assembled café and waiting-room chairs from components imported from Italy. The brothers used to sell the chairs on their own, delivering them to local customers, and their mother was chief accountant. In this period, the Polish market for office and restaurant chairs was dominated by imports from Italy. However, their high prices meant that the chairs were out of reach for ordinary Poles. The brothers decided to change this. They launched the production of cheap and modern office chairs affordable to everybody. Small companies started to blossom in the wake of transformation and they needed office equipment. The swivel chair became synonymous with modernity. Everybody wanted one.Snowball effect“The first money appeared quickly—the chairs were selling like hotcakes. Temptations were plenty. Our friends would travel, buy cars and houses. At a certain point, we had to make a decision what to do next. This is when we decided that each zloty we had earned should be set aside for investment no consumption, only the company counted,” said Jerzy.Initially, the chairs were assembled from parts. But it quickly turned out that this was not the right direction. In order to produce good chairs at moderate prices, one had to become independent from suppliers. In 1993, less than a year after the company’s establishment, Nowy Styl started the production of chair subassemblies as the first manufacturer in Central and Eastern Europe. Initially, these were metal parts. Later, the brothers launched the production of wooden and plastic subassemblies.The first production lines were developed according to Jerzy’s designs. He knew every element and every machine. If necessary, he spent all day in the factory. The snowball was set in motion. The company started to build factories in Krosno and its surroundings, buy bankrupt factories and saw mills. Since the beginning, the division was clear—Jerzy dealt with production and finances, Adam with expansion onto new markets, marketing and representing the company in contacts with business partners and customers.“Looking back, it is hard to believe that we had so much courage... perhaps this was sheer ignorance. It seemed that nothing was impossible to us. In 1995, we were at a fair in Moscow and only a year later fought for the German market in Cologne. The Germans were visiting our stand, examining and touching. They couldn’t believe these were Polish-made chairs,” Adam said. “We had a strong position on the Polish market and fought without any inhibitions for European and American markets. In the States, we were helped by our American partners.”Henry and Roland Stern treat Adam and Jerzy as members of their own family. Adam, the young man from Poland whom they met 13 years ago, changed their life. It is thanks to him that they are now co-owners of a large company and see Poland as a country of great opportunities. Adam treats Henry like his own father. Anytime Henry comes to Poland, they both go to a tailor to order several custom-made suits.No hang-upsIn the following years, Nowy Styl set up daughter companies in Poland, Mexico, Ukraine, France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Britain and Germany to deal with production and distribution. Nowy Styl was winning new markets with its sales growing fast from 2.2 million in euro terms in 1993 to 98 million in 1998 and 267 million euros in 2004. On the Polish market, Nowy Styl had a well-established position and over 1,000 distributors. They started efforts to expand onto foreign markets.“At a certain moment, we realized we had to base our success on exports. We already had several factories, our own construction and development plant, a tool plant, a wood laminate line, chromium plating plants, a research center and certificates. We cooperated with Italian and Dutch designers. Our chairs were winning awards. But we knew that we needed partners in individual countries to be able to sell. We didn’t want to preach to the converted. In France, we managed to establish a joint-venture company with a distributor. We met our French partners at a fair in Saudi Arabia. It was a period when we used to travel around the world from fair to fair. The event in Saudi Arabia was exceptionally dull. We were terribly bored. The French had a stand opposite ours and we started to talk to kill time. It turned out we had many common features and a similar attitude to doing business. When I was leaving, I knew we would be cooperating with these people. Without our partners’ contacts and the knowledge of their markets, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve success on these markets,” said Adam.Asked about the source of their success, both Jerzy and Adam shrug their shoulders. It’s nothing revealing—just an idea, boldness, consistency, hard work and a good luck to meet the right people. Sometimes it is hard for them to believe what a long way they have come. They are proud of their factories. Baltic Wood, one of the most modern plants producing floor paneling in Poland, is their favorite. At a fair in Poznaƒ in May, Nowy Styl Group presented several new products other than chairs manufactured under the Nowy Styl brand: Eljot sofas, BN office furniture, Stylistica wooden tables and chairs and Quo Sideo exclusive armchairs.The brothers are keeping up with changes on world markets and looking for new ideas. Business is still fun for them. But, Adam is trying to devote more time to his family. He lives with his wife and two children in Cracow. Whenever he is at home they have a quiet dinner together. Wine is his passion. He collects different varieties of wine and shares them with his friends.Jerzy has stayed in Krosno, closer to the factories. He values the tranquillity and wild nature of the nearby Bieszczady Mountains. He spends almost every weekend with his wife and two children in the family’s cottage on Lake Solina. He spends time fishing, raising animals and walking in the woods.The large number of awards they have received—Young Businessman, Exporter, Polish Business Leader—has not gone to their heads. They are still the boys from Krosno who were not afraid to chase their dream.author: Elżbieta Wrzecionkowska Nowy Styl Group provides employment to 3,000 people in Poland and 2,000 abroad. Every month, it produces 270,000 chairs in Polish plants and 230,000 in plants in Ukraine and Mexico. The company’s 2004 sales exceeded zl.1 billion. Nowy Styl is the largest producer of office, restaurant and stadium chairs in Europe and one of the largest Polish exporters. Some 60 percent of the company’s output is sold abroad. Nowy Styl is the winner of the Economic Prize of the Polish President in the Exporter category (2004) and the Golden Statuette of Polish Business Leader, awarded to the company by the Business Centre Club.