First there was one mastersmith. Then another. And then yet another. After those 100 years or so, Anders Persson entered the scene. “Clearly today’s Proplate operation is very different from my great-grandfather’s village forge. Even so, some things haven’t changed: the spirit of entrepreneurialism and our continued efforts to adapt and develop the operation. I’m also a mastersmith, in a way. A customer-oriented mastersmith.
Steel in his blood
Anders Persson, sole owner of Proplate, has steel running through his blood. He grew up in the industry, as did his father and grandfather. It all began back in 1869 when Per Andersson, Anders’ greatgrandfather, was awarded his master craftsman’s diploma. As a newly qualified mastersmith, he started up his own business. “He was the village blacksmith and carried out various jobs for the local community, everything from shoeing horses to repairing farm machinery. Obviously he was customer-oriented, it was a necessity.” By the turn of the century Levi Persson, Anders’ grandfather and son of Per, had established his forge operation in Degerfors. It came to be influenced and characterized by the two world wars that raged during Levi’s lifetime. “Grandfather’s operation was more industrialized. For example, he converted vehicles so they could run on alternative fuels – producer-gas vehicles. Anders’ father, Gunnar Persson, was the family’s next generation of mastersmith. He was the one who developed the company in line with the business concept Proplate lives by today. His idea was to create a Steel Service Center, i.e. an external supplier of services in plate machining, which came to replace many of the workshops that users of thick sheet steel used at the time. No such thing existed when the innovator Gunnar Persson started up his business in the 1950s.
Concept with two winners
“It was a competitive initiative which restructured the steel industry at the small-scale level and increased the industry’s efficiency,” says Anders Persson. “The basic idea is the same as the concept we work in line with at Proplate today. We do what we are good at, and our customers do what they are good at. And we both win from that.” The old cliché goes that the first generation of a family company starts the company and builds it up, the second generation manages it, and the third destroys it. That is certainly not the case with what is now Proplate, but the question remains: What is the fourth generation doing? Well, it is evolving the company, establishing it globally, making it even more efficient and customer oriented. These were the prospects that Anders Persson saw when, as a student of economics, he conducted a market analysis of his father Gunnar’s company Smidesbolaget i Degerfors, as Proplate was called at the time. “I had an epiphany and realized the potential of our concept and our expertise.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Proplate is riding on a wave of success and has a well-earned global reputation as a high-quality supplier on many levels. And that’s not all. We start talking about Anders’ own drive and how he is making his mark on the company. He is no longer involved on an operational level but is more ‘strategically active’, as he puts it. “I enjoy working globally and we have a business concept that works very well worldwide. I have always been export oriented. It works very well for a steel company that’s based in Sweden but operates globally. “When I took over my father’s business it felt like a duty. That feeling swiftly melted away when I carried out the market analysis and realized the enormous potential that existed. We are doing the right things, manifestly. Surely it’s difficult to feel anything other than satisfaction?” He continues: “As an entrepreneur it’s important to be professional, you can’t run a company as a hobby. Do that and there’ll be no development. I’ve always found a great intrinsic value in a company developing.”
Going his own way
Anders Persson is of course aware that problems can always arise in business. Even so he chooses to focus on the opportunities, and sometimes takes an unorthodox approach to take those opportunities to fruition. Take China for example. “Rather than reading and paying out large sums of money for market surveys, we went there. We wanted to get our own idea of the country, and above all what the Chinese are like as people. After all, they’re the ones we’ll be doing business with. We visited potential customers and then employed Joe Huang, and we built up the operation from there. “For the time and money it would have cost to prepare and analyze setting up a business by the book, we built up our operation over two years, employed a salesperson and gained several customers. The way I see it, that was effective.” And what is the main knowledge he feels the company has gained from its time in China? “That it’s not all that hard to do business with the Chinese.” More than 140 years have passed since his great-grandfather started a local blacksmith’s forge. What would Per Andersson think of Proplate? “He would love the drive and the corporate culture, but he wouldn’t recognize much else,” Anders says. But he pauses, and raises a finger as if to emphasize the importance of what he’s about to say. “Well, there is one other thing he would certainly recognize: That the customer is king.”
