Thursday 14 July 2016

Shipment with lithium battery

Deutsche Post banned shipping by air anything containing a lithium battery. Shipment with lithium battery up to 5 kg can be sent via UPS with this label

Monday 11 July 2016

How Grund creates their design?

As part of the project muzespodnikat.cz (see the previous article) I had a presentation at a grammar school in Jilemnice in the Czech Republic, where I spoke with the owner of the company Grund. It´s a company which produces bath mats, they have altogether around 190 employees 40 of them are in Germany. It´s a family company and it´s built on traditional values. I liked how they make the design for their products. Their designers are e. g Blanka Matragi (a Czech designer, her clients are women from royal families from all over Europe, influential women from the USA etc.), Karim Rashid, Mel Weisweiler (design for Esprit, Hugo Boss, Swarowski, Willeroy & Boch, ...), Luigi Colani (cooperated e. g with ALFA ROMEO, LANCIA, VW, BMW, BOEING and also with NASA), but they also have designers within their own company, who normaly don´t design. They just wanted to start cooperating. They then get a commission from the sold goods, which they designed. To be concrete we are talking about the Mandala Team, who make mandalas. We aren´t going to hire Blanka Matragi to design our website yet, but for the time being we already did put a small team together ;)

Do you really need an investor?

A few years ago I took a boardgame Cashflow to our company party. We struggled with it for quite a while, but at the end it was fun. It can´t be counted as one of the cheapest boardgames, but it´s a profitable investment. Because allows you to go through the basic vocabulary and the rules of investment and of course it also helps you to widen your financial awareness.

Not long ago I read a reflection about investment written by Sharon Lechter  - a co-auther for this boardgame, which is according to me fundamental for every start-ups. While starting the company which produces this Cashflow game, they had to set some rules for the financing of overhead costs. Those are, in my opinion, the most important components (or a weak spot) for every start-up. They already said it beforehand, that they won´t buy anything, which couldn´t ensure their sales increasement. At the same time they have to earn enough to get this overhead material on their own. They can do that if they´ll set up a sales target, which could cover the costs. When they couldn´t get a new copy machine for 3000 Dollars (which is as tempting as many other things at the begining for start-up companies), they bought a used one for 300 Dollars instead. At the end of the same year they could already change it for a new one, but not until their game became a so called bestseller.    

I like this way of thinking a lot. The number of contracts causes us inside the company a lot of pressure, mainly in the field of technology and also advancement altogether, so sometimes it´s really funny, what interesting things could be dig out. When we are presenting some new releases, I can tell them that it´s something we found in the waste collection. But think about it this way, that a problem occures out of nowhere, we aren´t capable to constantlly manage such a quantum and we don´t want to get into debts or we don´t have time to go to the investors to explain every detail of what we want to do in the future and that a new technology for each warehouse would cost us a million. So we start to do everything our way, which also includes our own developement and at the end we buy the technology from somewhere on the other side of the world literally from a scrap, we contact our manufacturer with our order, we tell them what kind of parts we want and in the most cases we can put it all together for just a fraction of the price. The manufacturers are very pleased, when they see someone so enthusiastic, someone who also found out their problem with the processor, so they even sent us some parts for free as thanks. We also do the same thing with our customers, when they find a problem in our system. I dont´s see anything wrong with choosing the path of optimization and economize on the things which can be economized in this time and age, when the company is successful, those are the keys for further investments.     

eBay.de Contact Information, Telephone Number, E-mail Address

eBay International AG
Zweigniederlassung Deutschland
Albert-Einstein-Ring 2-6
14532 Kleinmachnow
Germany

E-Mail: impressum@ebay.de
Telephone: +49 33203 851 021
Daily 8 AM - 10 PM

What is cystic fibrosis?

On the 30th of September 2015 I had a stopover in a café without a concept in Liberec in the Czech Republic, I wanted to visit a vernissage of the calender called Salty woman. It was a great get-together which presented many beautiful models. On the introduction page was a photograph of a model and the author of a very gripping blog about the life with cystic fibrosis. She died 15 days after this vernissage. She lost her fight with cystic fibrosis. I didn´t went to this vernissage just by chance. I went there because of Claire, a dear friend of our family and a beautiful young lady, who in the same time as this article was written became three years old. Claire was born with cystic fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis is a fatal inherited disease, which affects primarily the respiratory and digestive system. It is still an incurable disease. There are per year around 40 children born in the Czech republic with this disease.  At this gethering I found out that from the time Claire was born they began in Germany and in the USA to test the first drugs against some of the mutations of this disease. Although the first cure for the mutation for this disease is curently still developing, I began to think that there is still hope for Claire to lead a normal life, when there will still be volunteers who are willing to help and gather information and provide support to patients. For me personally was the information about the developement of the cure so unexpected and sensational, that I decided to help to increase the awarness of cystic fibrosis and present ways to help those in need.

The patients with cystic fibrosis in the Czech republic are united and supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Club o. s. whose bank account and Paypal account is below this article. The club speaks directly with the health insurance companies but also with the Prime Minister or the Minister for Health about the establishment of the cure. According to the Club is this matter still not so very successfull. The cure is very expensive and the approval process for a new cure is very unpopular. The Czech doctors from the center for cystic fibrosis are calling out for the patients to take this matter in their hands with an open letter, they say that for the acceptance of the new cure, which the state should pay for is mainly in their hands (the open letters are on the website cfklub.cz). I think that this matter isn´t just in their hands, that´s why I decided to create an update under this article which I will gradually complete. You can also contact me via e-mail (ondrej.krabs@mailboxde.com), when you want to publish whichever milestone.  

Ondrej Krabs
Mailboxde.com GmbH



Czech Cystic Fibrosis Association
Kudrnova 22/95, 150 06 Prague 5, Czech Republic
Tel. + 420 257 211 929, E-mail: info@cfklub.cz
http://www.cfklub.cz

Bank details:
IBAN: CZ58 0800 0300 1519 2110 1329
SWIFT / BIC: GIBACZPX

PayPal:
The organization will gladly issue a deed of gift on your request.