1. Your company has existed for almost five years. When you look back, are you satisfied with the work done? Has everything been done correctly? What are you proud of?

Yes, on 30 May this year we are celebrating a five-year anniversary of the company, and let’s put it this way, we can summarise the progress we have made during this period. We can be satisfied with the fact we still exist. Statistics is cruel – 7 out of 10 companies don’t survive first five years of their existence while we haven’t just survived, we have achieved certain success and we are striving further. Our company’s employers have done colossal work for this.

Therefore, I think our biggest achievement during this period is that we managed to put a solid team of professionals together, thanks to whom the brand “Akzhan furniture production” became recognisable in both corporate sector and sector of individual orders. As a result of this recognition, in 2015 we became the prize winner of the contest in nomination “The best Kazakhstan goods for people”in Astana city as well as other specialised Kazakhstan exhibitions.

Also, the accession to the Association of RK furniture and wood processing industry enterprises became a high-profile event for us. It opened up new opportunities for the development of our business within the entire industry, helped us to distinguish strong sides of our team, which eventually resulted in the fact that nowadays we arechosen by colleagues – Leaders of the consortium of domestic furniture manufacturers at such important projects as EXPO-2017 and construction of a new railway station in Astana.

2. In your opinion, why do your customers choose your furniture? What is the secret of your success?

Integrated philosophy in relations with customers, teamwork and high vigour in achieving goals – this is the key to our success. Before we had to spend about 80% of our time looking for new customers, but now thanks to recommendations of our regular customers the amount of orders is increasing by 2-3 buyers ever week. It should be noted that we constantly try to pay maximum attention to new customers of our products and not to forget our regular partners.

A demonstrative example for us in this field is the policy of MetroBank carried out in Great Britain. This is the first retail bank for more than 180 years that appeared in 1830 at the market of London banking sector and successfully earned its place in the sun. The fundamental creed of this policy is the creation of new customer experience through which a financial institution tries to provide maximum service that is convenient for the customer. Similar to that, our clients don’t have to look for a plumber or electrician to assembly built-in technical equipment and accessories or conduct repair in a flat. Our employees will be happy to offer our customer a list of certified companies that have a long-term experience in their field. We think that a furniture maker must manufacture furniture, a plumber –do plumbing, that is, every type of work should be done by a professional. Besides, we’d like to note that specialists of our company have a degree in architecture and design, so at the planning stage we can recommend our customers various interior design solutions. Thus, in many houses of the residential complex “Family Village”, “Avicenna” there is furniture in the interior designed by our specialists as a part of all-inclusive services. Not only can we do design, but we can also help to implement it through our construction and repair department. By the way, this is our new service and many customers really like it, as it is the opportunity to get a package of services in a single place, which is very convenient. Moreover, a complex use means a significant discount on furniture.

Gradually, we transfer this experience to B2B sector, since it is convenient for many corporate customers to work with one supplier of a wide range of services, who, in the long run, will bear full responsibility for this. Just imagine: you are building or buying an office and you need to have design and construction works performed, buy soft furniture, office chairs, office equipment, etc., that is, it is necessary to involve a great amount of suppliers. It’s not a secret that at Kazakhstan market there are many companies that, let’s face it, are not very responsible for the performance of contractual obligations. This is when we can help you with the support of our partners to develop designs, construction documentation. Everything will be done in the form of convenient albums with visualisation of products, technical description and, which is very important, dealer prices. I’m not going to hide that nowadays the company’s price policy is a slightly above average. However, we don’t “squeeze” our clients, instead via flexible price policy and dealer discounts we find the best solution for our customers. Once we had a funny incident when a customer asked to buy a land lot on the Moon for him, and by the evening we informed him about our price policy and operating procedures in this direction. Thank God, he turned it into a joke, as we were preparing a presentation on this deal and my employees were doing their job silently but looked askance at me.

3. What future prospectives of your company’s development do you see in the nearest time? Any plans?

To begin with, I’d like addressspecial acknowledgements to the employees of “Damu” Entrepreneurship Fund, “Atameken” National Chamber of Entrepreneurs who helped to guide the strategy of the company’s development in due course. With their assistance, I had an internship at the best enterprises of Germany, gained additional experience, establish business contacts with foreign partners. It helped us to make adjustments and modification in the plan of the further development of the company for the following 5-10 years.

As a result, we became official dealers of the Italian company Griggio Group in Kazakhstan. This company has a history of more than 70 years in production of machine tools and equipment for wood processing and furniture manufacturing. Negotiations with another international brand, also a group of Italian companies Biesse Group, are in progress on the matter of opening a representative office and service centre on the basis of our enterprise.

This, in its turn, and also the use of national programmes of business support gave us an opportunity to provide an internship of specialists at the enterprises of Italian partners and begin modernisation of a technological park of the enterprise with the latest equipment at a reasonable price. We bought new software applications for designers and constructors. Therefore, we want to share the experience of this modernisation with our fellow tradesmen. Symbiosis of our price policy and measures of state support will allow even a beginner furniture maker to buy machine tools of the highest quality. That is, we plan to begin the development of the supply of machine tools of leading Italian international brands in this sector at the market of Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries.

4. What is the biggest demand of customers nowadays? What category of buyers is your furniture targeted at?

As I said before, the main client of our company is the corporate sector that mostly need furniturefor offices and other rooms. Our company provided the supply to many regions of Kazakhstan, we have the experience of providing large construction objects with furniture of different purpose (cabinet, soft, etc.) of both serial and individual production. Notice that we conduct the supply and give servicing, warranty and post-warranty maintenance during 18 to 36 months after signing the acceptance report. Our clients are institutions and central offices of RK law enforcement agencies, ministries, enterprises of “Samruk-Kazyna” Holding and the private sector.

In the segment of individual orders, our customers are the middle and premium sectors of the market. Our subdivision develops and submits the design of furniture production suited to every customer’s taste. In production, we use materials of the highest quality from proven suppliers and international brands.

Although, currently we are working on launching the furniture of “Akzhan-LITE” brand at the market. This is lower-price furniture of the same high quality as in other segments. For example, in this programme you can buy stools at 680 tengea piece and more or kitchen tables at 3,000 tenge and more. The secret of such low prices is simple: introduction of new programme products gives us an opportunity to use purchased materials efficiently at the product construction and pattern cutting stage and organise practically non-waste production. Thanks to discounts for bulk purchase of the material we can significantly decrease retail prices for the final customer.

5. How do you generally assess the competition at the furniture market in Kazakhstan?

The market of furniture manufacturers in Kazakhstan is not so big – I’m referring to full-scale furniture production. In this connection, we try to produce furniture that is competitive with imported furniture by increasing the quality of our products, broaden the range and implement new technologies.

These days every man who can work with the saw and screw-driving machine thinks that he can produce any furniture. Of course, there are talented people, but very few.

We follow the policy that there is enough place in the sun for everyone. Therefore, as much as it is technologically possible we try to involve only real domestic producers in our projects – this is the essential part of the company’s philosophy in the choice of business partners.

But despite the policy of high loyalty towards customers and fellow tradesmen, recently we had to suspend business relationships that lasted for longer than three months with a VERY LARGE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY that provides furniture for a VERY IMPORTANT CONSTRUCTION OBJECT. Efforts of our team of constructors and designers, restless nights, running about at a word of the customer, frantic attempts to persuade the jammed printer to give out the last page of the project – all these things were wasted. Say nothing of long and detailed negotiations with suppliers ranging from Mediterranean and Baltic countries to Russia’s Far East on the delivery of quality base material.

As one of our customer’s managers said, the reason is banal – give a reasonable price. “I can download your pictures for less than half an hour on the Internet, what is difficult in forming a proposal?” We wouldhave found this remark fair if our customer’s employees hadgiven us an affirmative answer to many of our questions beginning with technical characteristics of furniture to the placement of furniture. So, we wouldn’t have had to sift through hundreds of pages of the project documentation looking for answers to the abovementioned questions. This took so much time, so many efforts, we had to make certain construction solutions, and there were many other difficulties. Well, it doesn’t matter, the customer at least read our proposals about conditions of possible discounts for the project. It’s an open secret that availability of orders portfolio is VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE OBJECT, it can never hurt further work, and we agree to give any discounts in order to work with this project.

Now then, waiting for the conclusion of the agreement that was guaranteed to us by these very employees, because of limited time and lack of other suppliers, unfortunately we learnt that “a foreign customer” of our client gave the preference in this field to “a foreign supplier”, and you guys should make some simple furniture.

Our company’s team is really sensible –well, duty is duty, and they started afresh, that is, restless nights, jammed printers that “try” to goof off after many hours of work –just like in the very beginning of work.

And what was the result? You have three guesses – “…thank you, guys, we have an undreamt-of “regular supplier”, their prices are lower”. The end. Any comment is needless. The “regular supplier” didn’t even draw up their proposal, they just removed our trademark from blanks and changed the price, but didn’t change furniture coding, the layout of the proposal. They just turned it into their proposal. Our lawyers who guided most of our projects explained to us, that indirectly the “regular supplier” violated Articles 177, 179, 180 of the Commercial code.

This is the competition. I’d like to append that there are many other reasons of such a phenomenon – the desire of the customer to decrease the cost price by any means, corrupted officials, lack of distinct corporate game rules of purchasefor private building owners and many others.

I want to address our readers: please, note that our company is open and always ready for mutually beneficial negotiations concerning price policy, choice of material and many other matters, except,so to say, dishonest business operations. Consequently, if we give our WORD to a customer and follow it, it is very often a good reason for further effective cooperation.

6. Do you have any new products for your customers?

It is a secret at this moment, but I will lift the veil for our readersa little. We are working with colleagues from Italy on developing a new line of furniture under a slogan “National colour with European quality”. We’ll see how it all shakes out.

7. Where do you find energy and inspiration?

Faith. Faith in yourself, in people. Well, and, of course, my family and friends! The army taught me to believe in myself. As I noted in earlier publications, Confucius once said: “It is better to light one small candle of gratitude than to curse the darkness”. So, our business is this candle for those who did military service and want to realise their own potential and experience for the good of our country, family and close people. The foundation of our company are officers and military service men who are retired or reserved, and that’s worth something!

8. What do you like most of all about your job?

Meeting new people, new projects. All new things I can see.

After my discharge from the Armed Forces of the RK, the government provided for me and my family – pension and accommodation. I could just lie on the sofa and spend the rest of my life doing nothing instead of seeing happy faces of my colleagues when we finish a project, satisfied customers when they settle in a new flat with new furniture and many other things that life brings every day.

9. Do you and your company have a slogan?

Yes – “Team that is not like others!”. It stemmed from the company’s philosophy. We fight for projects that, in the opinion of other companies, are hopeless, but not because we just want to earn more money – we like to analyse the situation thoroughly and find the solution. After that, we make a proposal for the customer with detailed calculations and operating procedures. Military service experience really helps when we develop a detailed plan for execution of any project. I want to thank my team and God who helped us to achieve success.

10. What else would you like to say?

I’d like to wish our customers and partners success in all endeavours, peaceful sky and love J!