Camping Trade World – Issue 05

INDUSTRY VIEWS BENJAMIN BAUR
team and in cases like this you
really get to see if you have the
right people in your company,
and I feel like a lucky guy. We
also learned that we are solid
in the complete supply chain.
There were some troubles and
some partners who did a bit
better or a bit worse, but we
could solve all the problems.
What it really showed us is
that we are all connected. We
are a supplier in between – we
source materials and we make
products for bigger companies.
The problem is that if I have
a perfect supply chain, it’s not
said that my customer has a
perfect supply chain. Or if I
have the products ready but the
OEMs or the RV manufacturers
cannot produce as they want,
then I do not have any benefits
of my good supply chain. We
solved the problems, and we
learned some very important
things for the future from our
experiences. An important
sentence that I learned in
the last year is “never waste a
crisis,” – we did that. And I can
honestly say that after this crisis
we are in better shape than we
would have been without.
What are the successes in the
company that you have been most
proud of so far?
It is quite hard to point out
one thing in particular. There
have been just so many positive
things that have happened with
our company in the past. To
work with prestigious partner
companies, to have our products
supplied in more and more
countries around the world like
Turkey and South Korea, a new
driver cabin door we plan to
launch in 2022 – all of these
things add up to make us feel
extremely positive. Maybe it
sounds strange, but the most
successful thing we managed to
create was that we found a way
to reflect on our own work here
▲ Baur’s doors are used by some big-name manufacturers.
as entrepreneurs. To reflect your
actions and refine the way you
work is so important. Maybe all
the most important successes will
come after that, but we found a
way during the last few years to
be sure of what our role is and we
are sure about what we have to do
to move forward. Maybe when we
talk again in five years I can tell
you more and perhaps that this
moment was the most important
success we have had.
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You recently wrote an interesting
article on LinkedIn about
an important business lesson
you learned from a Quentin
Tarantino movie – could you tell
us more?
I recently re-watched the movie
Kill Bill and there was a scene in
it which really hit me, because
of the experiences we have had
in the recent past, and also
my own personal experiences
in the last four or five years.
You don’t always have good
times. Sometimes you try to do
different stuff, like moving into
new markets or creating new
products – these are things we
explored when we first moved
into our current facility. This was
also a time when we were not
so happy with the end results
of our company, and we were
not sure why. We were working
hard, we gave everything we had
to make something good, but
somehow, we lost it a bit. We
reflected a lot on our actions
and we saw that we lost the
focus on our core processes and
WHO ARE YOU?
Company: Konrad Baur
GmbH
Founded: 2007
Location: Bad
Schussenried, Germany
Products: Doors for
caravans, motorhomes RVs,
mobile homes, and also
multi-purpose containers
Other: Currently
producing more than
4,000 doors annually,
Baur makes everything
in-house at its German
manufacturing facility
and exclusively uses 3D
CAD design to develop
and model its products to
highest standards and to
innovate with new ideas.
our core products. As a small
company, this is so important. In
this particular scene in Kill Bill,
Uma Thurman’s character has
just escaped from a hospital after
being in a coma and she is in the
back of her truck and she does
nothing else but concentrating
on a very small spot and trying
to wiggle her big toe. It was
exactly what I thought that I
experienced. A lot of times in
your thoughts you are already
four steps ahead and you are
thinking about future results and
benefits – sometimes you forget
that you are now sitting in the
truck and you must wiggle your
big toe. Everything else comes
after that step-by-step. As I saw
it in the movie, it really struck a
chord with me.”
Learn more about Konrad
Baur by visiting
www.kbaur-gmbh.com
www.campingtradeworld.com | 47