Bavarian Flower Headquarters: Anchored in the region: – Bavaria

Founder Margarete Ziegltrum probably never dreamed that her granddaughter Sonja would one day travel around the world on behalf of her small company. At that time, more than 80 years ago, the company consisted of the vegetable nursery in Giesing. Today the granddaughter Sonja Ziegltrum-Teubner tracks down the goods for her customers at the Bayerische Blumen-Zentrale, a medium-sized wholesaler in Vietnam, the Philippines or India.

Ziegltrum-Teubner is the third generation managing director. Traveling and shopping – if Sonja Ziegltrum-Teubner had known that she could turn two of her passions into a profession, she would probably not have thought about it for a second. But the decision to join the family business and to take over from their parents Roland and Hilde at the top at some point was by no means taken for granted in the mid-1990s.

Even then, the Bavarian Flower Headquarters was not what it is today. Flowers and plants had replaced the vegetables. But it was only with the expansion of the product range to include decorative items and accessories that business trips to leading trade fairs in Asia became necessary at all.

Today the trading company at the company’s headquarters in Parsdorf alone has an annual turnover of 14 million euros. The total turnover amounts to 50 million euros. “My two younger sisters had other plans. Then the entry into the business was up to me. But I haven’t regretted that,” says Ziegltrum-Teubner. She had first completed a degree in landscape architecture. She was still suspicious of the thought of bookkeeping at the time.

With the generation change, communication has changed

The 51-year-old now manages 150 employees in the nurseries, trade and administration at four locations for sales and production. She has been the boss for more than ten years. The generation change also brought a new culture of communication into the house. Not entirely without conflict, as the entrepreneur admits, because father and daughter chose “different approaches to personnel management”. “I’m certainly a little more open towards my employees and willing to listen to them. For me, that’s contemporary corporate management.” Father Roland communicated more “top-down”.

And there is one more thing that distinguishes her from her father. With her various voluntary activities, for example as a district councilor, as chairman of the regional committee of the IHK in the district of Ebersberg, as a former ambassador for Bavaria in the network “Companies integrate refugees” or in the network “Women connect” at Messe München “I am much more networked than that were my parents, “she says. Cross-industry exchange is important to her. Company-relevant contacts often developed from this. “Thanks to my large network, it is usually easy for me to find the right contact person.”

In a family business, however, you still go through crises together. The pandemic wiped out EUR 800,000 in sales in just a few weeks. Imports stopped and some of the customer traffic was lost. Like hundreds of thousands of other medium-sized companies, the Bayerische Blumen-Zentrale also called on the banks to warn them that liquidity might be needed in the short term.

The imports now come from 20 nations

“As a traditional company, you can certainly enjoy a leap of faith with the banks. Our regional profile, with a large number of customers from the surrounding area, then benefits us,” says Ziegltrum-Teubner. In other words: The banks know the importance of those companies with a long history for the region as employers, taxpayers, identifiers and social cement. Perhaps it also turned out to be useful that the company received the German government’s CSR special award for social responsibility in 2017 in the category “In-company integration of refugees in small and medium-sized companies”.

Open detailed view

Until shortly before the Corona outbreak, the company had its own branch in Vienna. But in the long run the effort became too great because of the distance, and the company decided to lease the property. In Straubing, too, the managing director decided to lease. But here the reason was different: a shortage of skilled workers.

Imports of cut flowers and lifestyle decoration now come from 20 nations. The business with potted plants from in-house production remains the company’s mainstay. That’s good for the balance sheet, because the freight rates for a container have multiplied from 2000 to over 15,000 US dollars since the beginning of the pandemic. “Certain customers simply want to be served directly and regionally from our nurseries,” says the boss.

Perhaps that is also one of the reasons that online business is “still neglected”. In Parsdorf, too, they know how the Internet works. “But we won’t get very far with our software,” says Ziegltrum-Teubner. The system of the future must take into account different price scales for different customers and different quantities. “We’re changing that right now.”

One problem is still unsolved

The company used the crisis to precisely analyze the processes at the individual production sites and to streamline the processes. In the past there were also regular idle times, which can now be avoided by increasing the mobility of the employees. The existential threat posed by the pandemic increased the willingness of the staff to flexibly change locations if it made economic sense. From then on, the company was able to forego spending on seasonal workers, which had previously closed the gaps, and secure all jobs with the help of the savings.

“So we got through the crisis better than we initially expected,” says Ziegltrum-Teubner, who is optimistic about the future. The next big problem for the company seems to be a decade or two in the future, namely when it comes to finding a successor to manage the company. The two adult sons of Ziegltrum-Teubner have already waved them off with thanks.