The Baltic start-up
Impressions from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
In one of Geberit's youngest sales organisations, team members work like founders: they take care of sales, marketing, events and more, and have to try new things to hold their own in three different markets.
A showroom in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius: Tadas Ivanauskas purposefully heads for the Geberit exhibit and installs the new actuator plate in two minutes. As he passes by, he quickly wipes a speck of dust off the ceramic appliance before swiftly mounting the seat on the ONE WC. This is followed by customer meetings, sample design for the showrooms and product training. Welcome to the everyday life of a sales representative in the Baltic States.
Sought-after all-rounder mentality
37-year-old Tadas Ivanauskas installs most of the products in the showrooms himself. “I taught myself everything, it’s really easy.” Here, it is part of everyday life for employees to take on additional tasks that are not part of their job description. In addition to classic sales activities, they also provide technical support, develop design concepts, give training courses and take care of translations or event organisation. A showroom consultant sums it up with a wink: “Geberit consultants like Tadas are all in one: sales, marketing, consultant, installer, psychologist, friend.“
Difficult starting position
With just 12 employees, the Baltic sales team covers Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And it does so successfully: since the sales organisation was founded in 2018, sales have grown by 50 percent – with the same resources.
No one was waiting for Geberit back then, as Managing Director Gediminas Repsys explains: “Most of our competitors have been here since the 1990s. Gaining market share was and still is difficult.“ This is also because Geberit is one of the more expensive suppliers. Added to this is the fierce competition: “Although we are three small markets, we have all kinds of competitors from all over Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, Turkiye as well as China.”
Three countries, three cultures, three languages
In this environment, it is important to serve three countries with different cultures and languages. In Lithuania, the Geberit series and wall-hung WCs are proving successful. In Estonia, on the other hand, the Ifö brand is more familiar and floor-standing WCs are the norm. Latvia lies somewhere in between.
Parsla Sauka, Sales Manager in Latvia, adds: “In Latvia, customers are very price-conscious, unlike in Estonia, where price is not the number one criterion.“ In other words, what works in Lithuania or Estonia does not necessarily work in Latvia.
