As Glas Istre writes on the 25th of November, 2019, due to its impressive 100 percent growth in sales in fifteen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Croatian company ”Bijeli svijet” (White world), in competition with more than a hundred companies from all over the world, has won yet another prestigious award. The global corporation LG Electronics has awarded Bijeli svijet with the ”Outstanding Growth Performance” award for the fastest growth in 2019.
”Although we come from little Croatia, we’re just one of more than a hundred partners of the Korean LG corporation, and for the second year running we’re winning international accolades. Last year, we received the Best Partner Award, and this year the record growth we experienced was rewarded,” explained Mario Martinek, Bijeli svijet’s director.
Bijeli svijet has experienced impressive results on the Croatian market as well as on the markets of fifteen European countries, from Poland to Greece. As the sole strategic partner of LG in this area, Bijeli svijet achieves all it does through an innovative business model. For over ten years, this company’s business story that has proven to be extremely profitable here in Croatia, and has thus been successfully applied across foreign markets as well.
The company’s success story initially started from the B2B segment, when Bijeli svijet equipped professional laundry facilities of most of the well-known facilities in the HoReCa sector, such as Hilton, Falkensteiner, Radisson, Kempinski, McDonald’s, Valamar, Maistra, Plava Laguna (Blue Lagoon) and many others.
They decided to share their knowledge and experience in the B2C segment as well, and back in 2014, they launched the Jumpstart program to help Croatian families who were seeking entrepreneurial pursuits by launching a mini-profitable laundry facility. They’re unique in that they guide their clients step-by-step through the whole process: from raising grants to starting a business to opening and operating in their own facilities.
As a result, over the last five years, they have helped as many as 150 entrepreneurs successfully realise their business dreams, thus stimulating the employment of more than 300 people. Bijeli svijet’s recorded increase is also consistent with the trend of increasing tourist traffic here in Croatia, which means, as was explained by Mr Mario Martinek, there’s much more laundry to be washed.
”Namely, from 2016 to date, the number of beds in private accommodation has increased by as much as 127,600, while for hotels this number is 5,800. It’s therefore not surprising that there is a growing need to open laundry facilities across the European market.
However, we’re proud that most of them are open along the Croatian coast, from Umag to Dubrovnik, where most of the revenue is generated during the tourist season. Today, foreign guests are increasingly staying in one destination for only two to three days, which leads to the need for the more frequent cleaning of such facilities,” explained Mario Martinek.
”We have a premium product and a premium service for service and accommodation facilities, which is why they choose us over the competition. When a hotel needs professional laundry service, we do a detailed analysis, project documentation and provide them with the installation, equipment, maintenance, consulting and everything else they need,” says Martinek.
According to him, the story doesn’t stop there either, as Bijeli svijet is transferring its best practices to its European distributors – on the basis of the company’s model, laundry facilities were opened in Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Sarajevo and Podgorica. All this was achieved with the wholehearted support of the LG corporation, which selected them as their sole partner in Eastern Europe, and the efforts they make to educate citizens and numerous companies across not only Croatia but the wider region have been repeatedly recognised with prestigious awards.
There are twelve experts in the Bijeli svijet team, which gives clients security in business. They also have the most service partners in the country and products such as professional rollers, washers, dryers for utility and self-service laundries. The results for the customers are quite measurable: it is an annual savings of 25 percent on electricity consumption and as much as 44 percent on water consumption.
More than 1,500 satisfied customers and over 5,000 devices sold guarantee that this is not the last award for Bijeli svijet.
Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.
