Entrepreneurial attitude and bold decisions - these have been driving us since the beginning and by now thanks to these, PIER Technical has became Europe’s biggest private label lifejacket and globally recognised technical garment developer and producer. Our partners include the most prestigious brands, among others we produce lifejackets for Regatta, Helly Hansen, Besto and Secumar, waterproof garments for Ortovox, Mountain Equipment and Tierra , but also we manufactured the waterproof clothing for the Hungarian Parlament Guards and for the Hungarian Police.
Our history started in 1995, when a small production line with 19 people was established and lead by 3 recently graduated economists
(Ferenc Erdősi, István Pidl and Katalin Szalánczy) with a support of a professional (Anna Pelyhéné) we entered the challenging environment of the textile industry.
Similarly to most textile companies in the 90-s in Hungary, intially PIER also operated on contract work, but we sought to have more autonomy in the same time from the beginning.
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"Relatively early we took on the product development also - which was not similar to other companies - and we have maintained this ambition even on
the difficult model ranges. As a result of a long process and a stable financial structure, we were able to create PIER’s financial background,
that enabled us to take over the entire production process."
From then we took controll on the whole supply chain, starting with sourcing of the materials, organizing production capacities until the shipment of the finished goods. Development is carried out by an internal product team of 40 professionals in Komlo. They create patterns and prototypes in our sample room based on our partners’ specifications, our buying team handles the sourcing of the required components for production through, our extensive international supply chain. Our Eastern-European manufactories are also supplied with the needed components from Komlo HQ, while our productions are supported and controlled on-site by our own technicians and quality members. All finished products go under final quality controll in Komlo and from there will be shipped to our European partners’ warehouses.
The above structure worked out really well with numerous partners and therefore these have became the basis in our customer cooperations by now.
Due to the increased orders in the recent years, besides our own domestic productions (Komlo and Sellye) we have outsourced a significant volume of our productions to centralised locations in Ukraine and Romania, thus there we have became an intermedier in Hungarian development, know-how and logistics. We knew that in order to be successful in the future, we need continuity to be achieved through the generational change in management that we have been working for the last years.
"The emergence of the next generation has made it clear to us that we need an organizational change that is also vital for our colleagues to ensure the efficient
and up-to-date operations. PIER started out as a small family business without having multinational company background, we learned almost everything from our own experience.
With the arrival of our children to the company the time has also came to update the organisational culture and prepare the first generation (founders)
to hand over the controll to the new leaders. The handover has been considered successfull as it did not happen one day to the other so our partners and
our colleagues could have accepted the young company leaders."
At PIER, we have tangible results from our work that gives the feeling of success and real inspiration to me. I believe we are responsible to maintain and move forward the good
funds created by our parents and by building on these develop the company further. I think as an employer, we are able to offer outside of Budapest great perspectives to youngers
and give them the opportunity to pursue and outstanding career path in an international environment.
I grew up under the spell of PIER, but I didn't really know how the company operated. I have experienced already when I joined the company that PIER is a really complex
organism with high level of energy. There is always something to do for our colleagues and we all contribute to the flow of operation on a daily basis.
Although there is an organizational hierarchy, but actually one of our key drives is the human attitude.
We plan our future in Komló, therefore in 2021 with the cooperation of the government of Komlo we built our new logistics center here.
Being as a good citizen, we have been continuosly cooperating with the local authorities (Komló and Sellye) to support a number of local events and projects that attitude was
rewarded with „Pro Urbe” by the government of Komlo in 2016.
It has been always a priority for us to have a human value based company atmosphere and empathy towards families as we have known that our colleagues’ professionalism and commitment
means the future and success of PIER.
"In our strategic decisions we have always benefited from our different temperament as leaders, that potentially could control each other in the most sufficient way.
There has been always an aspect that we are not satisfied what we have, we always wanted more.
I see this healthy ambition in our young generation leaders as well. My own motivation today is still to think on solutions that lead us simplier,
faster and more efficiently to our goals. This also contributes to our success."