as well as Bossard in Switzerland. The vision was characteristically simple and direct. “We had
a business idea of how to run the company and it is still on that road you could say. You change your goals, of course. Set them too high at any point and things will not be ok.” Maybe not, but he could hardly be accused of lacking ambition. “First we had the goal to be Number One in Sweden; then in Scandinavia. Then we went for Europe and after that to be a global fastener supplier.” “There are not so many truly global players,” he acknowledges,
“and Bufab still has a number of white spots on the map to fill but we grow ever closer to that goal.” Björstrand began importing from the Far East at the end of
the 1970s – very early for a nascent company and, indeed, for any European importer to venture into China. He travelled personally to discover the factories: a very different world than now. “Then it was about going out and finding factories no-one else knew about. Today the world is wide open and everyone can find the factories so business is about the efficiency of the line between producer and user.” A theme that will recur later. Buying initially from well-known factories in Taiwan,
Björstrand visited mainland China at the start of the 1980s and recalls the experience graphically. “As we came into the airport it was an agricultural landscape. There were only three hotels in Shanghai - I stayed in the Peace Hotel – and the factories just had numbers: Factory Number 4, Factory Number 5.” In a still largely isolated country, the pioneer had a huge
advantage. “They had no idea of the price levels outside of China. The factory manager looked at my purchasing proposal and simply signed it even though the prices were well below what we could obtain in Europe. Of course, there were far more quality issues than today. Now quality for standard products from China and Taiwan is rarely a big issue, although in India it remains a concern.” The other change is in world awareness. “Today, the Asian manufacturers know exactly the world price; in fact, they often know more than we do.” Bufab’s customers were all over Sweden, virtually from the
beginning. “Mainly they came to us because they wanted the full range. The Swedish standard was still strong and the fastener manufacturers wanted to keep it that way to protect their business. Industrial companies, though, increasingly needed DIN and later on ISO specification products. We had the advantage of being able to go outside Sweden to source them.” For Hans Björstrand one of the biggest milestones for the
company came as it started to sell to big industries on the back of this capability to supply a full range. “In Scandinavia, industry is somewhat remote and in the early 1980s that was particularly true. If an industrial company could reduce the number of suppliers this was very important to its business.” As Bufab has developed so its capability to offer a full service concept, now far more wide ranging than just fasteners, has become more and more fundamental. Björstrand is adamant that Bufab helped Swedish industry
to survive. “I used to say, when Volvo made excavators in the south of Sweden, that it did too much inside the company. If it had outsourced some of its more labour costly components it could still be there as an efficient factory today.” In the region surrounding Varnamo there is a concentration of smaller manufacturers, which Björstrand believes, learnt that lesson. “They know they cannot produce everything themselves,
especially if there are processes that are too expensive to carry out in Sweden. They have made a judgement about what they can make profitably themselves and what they must import.” Bufab’s history has not been entirely without crisis, although
it is fact that in every year since its inception it has made profit. Ownership shifted, though, on a number of occasions. “In 1986 Finnveden was started in this city to help businesses moving from one generation to the next.” Björstrand was one of seventy founders. “It started to buy local companies with the objective of supporting industry in the region.” Eventually Finnveden sought to buy shares in Bufab, initially a 25 percent stake and then, when Björstrand’s partner wanted to enjoy retirement, a 50 percent share. “After some years they came back, for stock market reasons looking to hold full ownership. They made me a good offer and it was OK for me. I continued as before and did not see a big change in my life, except for having a little more money in my pocket.” A Swedish tax regime, which was highly punitive for business owners made many others make a similar decision at the time. In 1992 a crisis did hit as the holding company suffered the consequences of too many risky investments and restructuring became unavoidable. “Bufab was a healthy company,” says Björstrand, “so I called the bank and said we needed to be independent. The bank said OK, just continue. Eventually, though, it took over the whole Finnveden business, which was not something I was very happy about because it did not open the door for other shareholders to invest.”
“ It is no good the fastener supply chain thinking it can recover margins in the long term. The reality is that businesses must find ways to make profit on leaner margins.”
In 2004 Hans Björstrand went to, by now owners, Nordic
Capital and made the case again for Bufab’s independence. The recommendation was accepted and Bufab separated from
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