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Lynka Promotional SolutionsPioneer on the Polish market

Polish-American know-how: Lynka is one of the pioneers on the Polish promotional textile market.

When John Lynch received his first or-der for imprinted T-shirts in 1993,

there wasn’t even a word for “promotion-al textiles” in Poland. Even today the US American describes the call from a brew-ery from the North of the country to his office in Krakow as destiny-making, since it more or less laid the foundation for the pro-motional products industry in the Eastern European country. “In the post-communist countries, most of the firms were former-ly state-run companies, which didn’t even have their own logo, and certainly didn’t have the need to advertise their products. Marketing was quite simply superfluous in communist regimes, especially the imple-mentation of promotional products,“ recalls Lynch today. The corresponding structures were not available to procure or customise promotional products.

Up until the day he received that all im-portant call, John Lynch and his tiny com-pany had concentrated their efforts on procuring and imprinting T-shirts for the souvenir distributors of the arousing Polish tourist business. Until then this was easily manageable supported by six people and a hand press – until that brewery rang to say they needed 4,000 T-shirts imprinted with their logo. A major problem: At that point of time there wasn’t a single T-shirt manufac-turer in Poland. Lynch telephoned all over Europe and found someone in the Nether-lands who was able to provide him with the

desired number of garments at such short notice. However, since nobody wanted to give a Polish company credit at the time, Lynch hired a delivery van, drove 14 hours to Amsterdam, loaded up the shirts and paid the 5,000 Dollars in cash. It took him two days to finalise the customs formalities and then he drove the goods back to Po-land. Where they were then imprinted day and night on the small hand press. Lynch had to recruit students from Krakow Uni-versity to help him, otherwise he would never have been able to finish the work on time. The order was completed and proved to be a huge success: Two weeks later a fol-low-up order for 5,000 shirts was placed. Lynch, who had quickly realised that he could earn more money in a month with such orders than he had done previously within six months, jumped into his van and drove back to Amsterdam.

Setting up structuresThese initial wild years of the promotional textile business are now a thing of the past – something which can also be put down to the merit of Lynch and his company Lyn-ka Promotional Solutions. Lynch is a mar-keting professional through and through, who took a degree at one of the most fa-mous universities in the USA for economics. “At the start it was an absolute advantage for Lynka in Poland that I am American. It was the quality seal and almost like a blank

cheque,“ Lynch said looking back to the days when the reputation of Polish compa-nies and products wasn’t exactly the best. Lynka’s initial marketing strategy was to sell to foreign companies, predominantly to German and US companies with subsidiar-ies in Poland. Their marketing concept was better defined than that of the Polish com-panies.

Lynka set up procurement and sales structures and played a large role in open-ing up the Polish market for promotional products. The company has expanded from being a 6-man business with premises cov-ering 70 m² into a concern employing 120 people, who work in 3 shifts at the com-pany’s own premises stretching over 3,200 m² in the South of Krakow. Lynka is a tex-tile wholesaler whose portfolio includes the large brands of the promotional textiles branch: Fruit of the Loom, B&C, Russell, Kariban, etc. Lynka is allegedly the largest textile wholesaler in Central Eastern Euro-pean.

However, Lynka’s real expertise is the im-printing business: Hardly a single garment leaves the warehouse without a personali-sation. The Polish company has won more than 40 international awards in Europe and the USA over the past ten years for textile decoration – “more than any other Euro-pean company,“ states Lynch. Lynka dis-poses of machines for screen-print, offset printing, pad printing and embroidery. One

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Profile

This is the core of the company: Lynka’s strengths in-clude a well-functioning sales department and the tar-geted acquisal of new customers.John Lynch is the mastermind behind Lynka.

of Lynka’s specialities is the application of several customising techniques on one gar-ment, as well as imprinting difficult parts of the clothes such as the sleeves or the inside of the collars.

One-stop shopLynka’s philosophy: One-stop shop. “We want to take care of everything for the cus-tomer, from the procurement of the tex-tiles, the imprinting, packaging, dispatch, through to the customs formalities, etc.,“ explains Lynch. Lynch orientates himself on the US market in this respect: “There the one-stop shop service is taken for granted, whereas in Europe it is only taking on very slowly.“ In the meantime Lynka doesn’t just

limit this service approach to textiles: The Polish company also introduced other pro-motional products to its assortment in 1999 (they are partly purchased from large im-porters and partly directly from Asia), which meanwhile make up 50% of the turnover. Since Poland became a member of the EU in 2004, Lynka’s export business has ex-panded enormously: The company now delivers products to 20 different countries. “Our most important markets are Germany, Austria, Scandinavia and Benelux,“ com-ments Malgorzata Migacz, Export Manag-er at Lynka. In the meantime 35% of the company’s turnover is generated outside of Poland. Whereas Lynka presents itself as a promotional products distributor within Po-

land due to the historical development of the company, selling products directly to the industry, the Krakow company acts as a supplier on an international level, where-by products are exclusively exported via the promotional products trade channels. Never- theless, Lynka also delivers to distributors within Poland: Via its own brand Avalon.

Custom-made designs are however not part of John Lynch’s business philosophy. “We don’t want to keep our customers waiting with long development phases. We have 27 different T-shirt cuts, how many more can be invented?“ he asks rhetori-cally. “The promotional textile manufactur-ers’ offer has changed and is much more oriented on current fashions today. The big

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The textiles are individualised and subjected to strict quality controls in the large, light-filled factory hall.

Lynka has won over 40 international awards for its printing quality.

Colours galore!

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textile companies keep on bringing out new collections. So we have a fitting solution for 90% of all customer requirements. Our offer allows us to deliver the goods to our customers more efficiently and follow-up orders can be processed much faster,“ is how he under-lines the advantages of his philosophy.

The future: Polish companiesThe concept works well for Lynka: Today the company is the largest provider of promotional products in Poland. Lynch also sees growth potential here for the future: “The Polish companies have in the meantime also recognised how important marketing is and are im-plementing promotional products more and more. Our business with small and middle-sized companies is constantly increasing, we are now profiting from the structures that we have created, and from the educational work we have performed on the Polish market for years.“ As well as carrying out pioneer work in establishing prod-ucts (polo shirts were simply not available in Poland up until 15 years ago) and in the environmental protection sector, ensuring high busi-ness and labour-ethical standards, vis-à-vis their own employees as well as their customers. This is not a matter of course in Poland even if the country is an EU member: Bribery is still very much on the daily agenda in the world of business and makes life incredibly difficult for many foreign companies. Nevertheless, one only hears positive com-ments about the EU from Lynch: “We have profited immensely from the EU funding and were able to finance training for our employees for instance as a result.“ BM

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