by Bogdan Munteanu
None of Slovenia’s top 10
wealthiest people is outrageously and undeservedly rich – like it’s often the
case with many nouveaux riches in most former Communist countries from Eastern
Europe. Their combined wealth would only make up half of what Melania Knauss,
the currrent Slovenian wife of billionaire Donald Trump, could inherit upon her
husband’s death.
If there were a common thread to
be traced in the lives of Slovenia’s richest, that would be a sort of ‘raw
entrepreneurship.’ They started from scratch, had some brilliant ideas, and –
thanks to sound business intuition and determination – they eventually made it
to the top. This is how Igor Akrapovič did it.
Some 25 years ago, not even he
could have imagined that one day he would be worth some €100 million and be
known as the 6-7th richest Slovene. He just wanted to make a decent living
after two decades (1970- 1990) of glory in his sports career. Although he was
Yugoslavia’s most renowned motorcycling racer, he was no one in business.
But that was no particular
disadvantage. In a time when Communism was crumbling, no one else knew how to
run a business; nor whether a hobby could end up helping someone earn a living.
Succeeding where others kept
failing
To Igor Akrapovič that seemed a
reasonable thing to do. What else did he know to do apart from delicately
tuning engines in order to achieve optimum power and sound? During his racing
years, he had learned how technical problems could be fixed and engines be
improved. On the other hand, he had became aware of an insurmountable issue
that motorcyclists stumbled upon: they couldn’t find high-quality exhaust
systems.
Exhaust pipe walls manufactured
in Socialist countries were too thick. Their Western-made equivalents –
somewhat thinner, but far from the ideal Igor yearned for – were too expensive.
This made the former racing champion start working on some systems of his own,
as he knew too well that the performance of an engine is significantly
dependant on the quality of the exhaust system.
Short of financial capital and
lacking essential machinery, Akrapovič could at least count on five similarly
enthusiastic work partners. In just a couple of years, it became clear that he
was as good at designing and building exhaust systems as he had been at racing.
In 1993, he invited Kawasaki
Deutschland to test his race exhaust system. Much to their surprise, they
discovered an incipient ‘technical revolution’ emerging in a 450 square meter
house converted into a workshop. It was just the beginning of a ‘pilgrimage’ to
the little town of Ivančna Gorica (45 km south of Ljubljana), that would
eventually be made by all famous motorcycle makers among which Aprilia, BMW,
Ducati, Honda,Yamaha, Suzuki…
Igor would gather a team of
like-minded technical experts and they would carefully listen to the demands of
these fastidious clients. By replacing steel with titanium and carbon fibre,
by perfecting every product as if it were an art sculpture, and by putting
prototypes to ruthless tests, the little Slovenian company would gradually
carve its way to world fame.
After the first victory of a
biker riding a motorcycle equipped with Akrapovič’s exhaust system (1997),
sales exploded in Germany. By 2014, Akrapovič’s craftsmanship had been
certified by winning at least 80 championships in all possible car and
motorcycle competitions. Outside the motorcycling world, the company is now a
treasured supplier of Porsche and Audi.
Turning a Slovenian surname
into a global brand
Such a steadily growing interest
for high-performance exhaust systems required moving the production to a
proper factory of 3,000 sqm (1999) and then to its more than fourfold expansion
to 13,000 sqm (2010). Designed by Igor’s wife, one of Slovenia’s top
architects, the factory created the premises for the company’s world domination
of this niche market. As of 2015, close to three quarters of all top-quality
exhaust systems sold in the world are made in Ivančna Gorica.
Yet the road to fame hasn’t been
hassle free. Pressured to give up the firm’s original name, Skorpion, by Ford
Motor Company’s lawyers – who argued that the name was prone to be confused
with their Scorpio sedan – Igor turned his surname into a global brand. It
wasn’t hard to do so, since the word ‘akrapovič’ means ‘scorpion’ in turkish.
In 2010, the Slovenian scorpion
took a symbolic revenge. As Ford was struggling to repay the $5.9-billion
governmental bail-out, Akrapovič was opening a subsidiary in California. But
problems emerged from all sides, not just from the envious automotive industry.
Throughout the 1990s, as
Yugoslavia was falling apart, managing the relation with suppliers was a
constant mess. At one point, Akrapovič had to deal with 50 different importers.
Slovenia’s accession to the EU (2004) simplified some things, but brought other
constraints, such as the need to fulfill European emission standards. Also,
functioning in a EU country adds other concerns: the rising cost of the
workforce, the permanent quest for highly skilled workers, or the tax burden.
“The pay for people who have
completed higher education is burdened with a 60% tax,” Igor Akrapovič once
complained in Sinfo, a Slovenian government magazine. He’s not afraid
to speak his mind: “There is an over-sized state administration weighing
down those who are creating new value.” Also, he bemoans the fact that,
because of Slovenia’s progressive tax system, “it is the hardworking and the
capable who are taxed, not the rich.”
Nevertheless, none of these
obstacles ever discouraged Akrapovič. A resilient entrepreneur, he has never
considered moving production elsewhere or transferring his wealth to a tax
haven. On the contrary, he has been investing tens of millions of euros in
research & development, purchasing the latest production equipment and
paying for the training of his employees.
The jolly scorpion who still
enjoys his hobby
When thinking about a predatory
arthropod like a scorpion, most people imagine a ‘stingy’ creature, but that
would be the opposite of Igor Akrapovič. On numerous occasions he cheerfully
declared himself “lucky to have made a hobby that I loved so much into a
job”. Having now retired from managing the company – but still working all
day long on devising even better exhaust systems – he’s still concerned with
making his employees feel equally lucky that they work for him.
Their wages are up to 100% above
the average pay in Slovenia. The company struggles to hire the best and to
offer them unequalled working conditions. Though educated only to the level of
technological high school, Igor describes himself as a ‘self-educated’ man who
reads a lot, shows interest in many things, has innovative ideas that he dares
to put into practice and, above all, keeps on learning by doing, that is by
tinkering with engines.
This is the kind of people he
likes to be surrounded with, part of a big family of motorsport enthusiasts,
and he can’t imagine Akrapovič’s success without them. “In order to run a
successful business, hard work is necessary, as is constant investment in the
company and honest working relations with the people”, he believes.
Unassuming, Igor doesn’t see
anything special about himself: “Anyone in Slovenia can be an entrepreneur.
The problem is that not everyone is prepared to put in 14 hours of work a day
while taking professional and personal chances. At one time, for instance, I
had to mortgage all of my property. The fact is that entrepreneurship brings a
great deal of risk with it.”
„Anyone in Slovenia can be an entrepreneur. The problem is that not everyone is prepared to put in 14 hours of work a day while taking professional and personal chances. At one time, for instance, I had to mortgage all of my properties. The fact is that entrepreneurship brings a great deal of risk with it.“
„Anyone in Slovenia can be an
entrepreneur. The problem is that not everyone is prepared to put in 14 hours
of work a day while taking professional and personal chances. At one time, for
instance, I had to mortgage all of my properties. The fact is that entrepreneurship
brings a great deal of risk with it.“
