Focus on TAKKT AG

Profile of an enterprising Group of Companies

Profile of an enterprising Group of Companies: the leading business-to-business mail order company for business equipment in Europe and North America an international presence a virtual organisation i.e. no outlets and stores more than 75,000 products which are mainly available via printed catalogue, CD ROM and the Internet the overall total of print media copies is no less than 40 million professional customer service staff customers in all kinds of businesses of anything between 5 and 1,000 employees at all levels in the company - from the shop floor to the boardroom around 1,500 employees managing 1.6 million customers reached a turnover of more than DM 1 billion in 1998. Hitherto successful as the KAISER + KRAFT Group mail order division of GEHE AG, the company will present itself on July 1, 1999 as an independent division within the Haniel Group. The new name? TAKKT. Once the spin off process has been completed, the new company will become quoated on the stock exchange in the autumn of 1999.

The holding company will then manage three separate divisions - KAISER + KRAFT Europa, Topdeq and K + K America - involving a total of 27 distribution companies. The holding company already sees itself as a value adding management and holding company responsible for creating synergy effects, for transferring knowledge between the individual companies, for developing new market segments and new markets and for consolidating previous business by means of further acquisitions.

As Georg Gayer, the designated CEO of TAKKT AG, stated: "We will not be relaxing. We will be setting the pace in the market." Unlike the consumer sector where the mail order company more or less stimulates demand it is the customers who determine the turnover in the business-to-business sector. They only order when they actually need something. But, as Gayer points out: "There is enough demand around". In fact, growth in the business-to-business sector in the years ahead, is set to rise faster than in the consumer sector. Experts are even predicting rates of between ten and fifteen percent.

The business-to-business mail order trade is a highly volatile market and any competitive advantages tend to be only short-lived. Since all the different suppliers' products are very similar, it is crucial that one's performance is convincing regarding corporate add-on values such as service, schedule reliability and ... speed. Gayer: "In essence, our business is relatively straightforward: we have to be faster than the others and so make our customers' business as simple as possible". A cutting edge can only be gained by those who anticipate their customers' requirements and react to them accordingly. In other words, by those who react to them first because that first move advantage is so decisive. Not surprisingly, TAKKT's targets in the virtual trade sector are just as ambitious. Indeed, the companies within the TAKKT Group are already strongly committed to e-commerce with the Internet long since being everyday routine as a distribution and communication channel. Yet TAKKT intends to remain in the driving seat and actively mould this still new market. Growth opportunities in the business-to-business sector will be found, above all, in even closer networking with the customer companies.

As the integration into the customers' own merchandise information system becomes reality, TAKKT will become a kind of "internal" supplier and service provider, a reality which might eventually include managing the customers' warehouses on their behalf. At the end of this process, we will have a new kind of mail order trader. One that does not impress through products alone but also increasingly through speed and flexibility. Attributes which are already making a difference to a company today and which, in the future, will be more significant than ever before. The KAISER + KRAFT Group has, thanks to its efficient virtual organisation, ideally equipped our company for this task. Now, TAKKT AG is embarking on a brand new chapter on its way into the next millennium.

July 1, 1999