For the coming period, we will present you week by week, the most outstanding PTC showcases that were officially nominated for The Global Best Practices Awards Program 2018. The profiles of these companies are also present in the WOPCOM platform, which you can access here.
SERVITEX (Germany) – The Special Award for Extraordinary Business Development at GBPAP18 – Industrial Textile Services
The advantages of nationwide contracted collaboration
Many Textile Service companies operate just one or two laundries. In essence they serve their regional markets, which have a certain radius, defined by costs of logistics. That makes business difficult with customers, which act all over Germany, or even Europe as it is the case with hotel chains. This problem is the starting point of Servitex GmbH. Its main mission is to overcome regional boundaries of medium sized textile service companies by collaboration of partners. These partners form a nationwide offer, and build a national b2b – brand to accomplish the needs of big customers, which work all over the country.
Servitex is specialized in textile services for hospitality. In this market the hotel chains have the by far highest market share and are still the growth drivers. Thus it becomes more and more difficult for regional laundries to exploit business potential in the hospitality, especially in the most attractive hotel market, if they can service only locally. To build a suitable, national offer for hotel chains, Servitex partners offer same products and services, same service standards and same contracts to hotels. Servitex developed a joint national marketing, sales and service network to be eligible for framework agreements and national businesses in the hotel industry.
National perspective, local operations
Partnering in Servitex means that five medium sized and independent textile service companies have established Servitex as a joint venture. The partners all have same rights, obligations, contracts and same voting rights. But they remain independent, and may also work independently in other market areas. They are just collaborating in the hotel business. This works only, if collaboration defines exclusive regions for the partners, to avoid competition between them. Servitex GmbH headquarter in Berlin is the spearhead of national business, which is operationally centered and delivered in the regions by the independent partners. Servitex has built a network (see map „Servitex Network“), which reaches out from Grimmen in the north of Germany to Munich in the south and from the west to the east. The five partners operate with ten laundries. Additionally Servitex has service partners in Austria and Switzerland to cover the whole German speaking regions. These service partners however, do not have shares in Servitex GmbH.
Three competitive advantages
The economic beauty of the Servitex approach is not only to allow mediums sized textile service companies to qualify for national or trans-regional business. Additionally customers can benefit from typical advantages of medium sized companies like very high customer focus, quick decisions and flexibility. And on top of these two advantages Servitex is specialized on the textile need of hotels. A production like Fliegel Textilservice Nord in Grimmen, North-East Germany, serves 50 hotels. That specialization allows for a very fine tuned service to the requirements of this specific customer group, and together with the knowledge exchange and other synergies between Servitex partners each company and their plants enjoy a substantial competitive advantage in the hotel
business towards non – specialized or differently structured textile service companies.
At the end of the GBPAP18 Event in Milan (October, 19th, 2018), Mr. Rolf Slickers, CEO of Servitex, told CINET: “The entire GBPA event, it´s preparation, organization and the experienced level of service afterwards, were really outstanding and remarkable, you can be very proud of your team and family! The press coverage of our Special Award started good, making it on the first side of the leading German online magazine “Cost & Logis” and more coverage in laundry magazines will follow. I had not entered the international laundry stage before and have made interesting contacts, some of them will last. So your goal – connect leaders and combining forces in the international laundry industry, had been achieved at once in my case!”