2. Annalisa & Reiner Kern Preserving the Family and the Business
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Annalisa & Reiner Kern
Preserving the Family and the Business
in the Enterprising Families

3. Your logo

4. HISTORY
Kern Tunneltechnik SA is a family company founded in 1998 in Germany and moved to Switzerland in 2010
Its core business is the engineering and supply of tunnel machines for the secondary lining.

5. PRODUCTS
The final products of Kern are tailor-made tunnel machines, engineered to meet the client’s need in terms of tunnel geometry, casting procedures, concrete recipe and health & safety requirements.

6. STRATEGY
The strategy of the company is based on innovation and the mission is to bring technology in a special sector that has never been enhanced since 30 years.
For the first time the machines are developed from the “opposite side”, the customer’s point of view.

7. CULTURE
Mr. Kern himself comes from the practical side of the job - the frontline in job-side – so the new conception of the machine comes from solving all the issues that people are really facing, working every day with the machine.

8. CULTURE
The company’s culture is therefore influenced by the combative spirit of the founders, so that in just 7 years the team was able to integrate new patented technologies in more than 400 machines, optimising the system of pouring concrete in underground construction.

9. Achievements
The company was even awarded for Innovation in Product Design and Technology by the British Construction Industry

10. THE COMPANY IN FIGURES
Reiner Kern founded the company in year 1998 in Germany
He started as sole trader, as construction machinery agent and assembling firm
He gathered good and bad experiences from several competitors
In 2010, together with his wife, he founded the engineering company in Lugano
In just 7 years of activity, the company grew from 4 people to about 100 employees
(Switzerland + manufacture in Slovenia)
Turnover increase of 350% in 7 years (now about 15 millions CHF)
Market share: leading in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and UK

11. COMPANY’S STRUCTURE

12. Future perspectives
The market potential for Kern’s products and innovations are enormous in UK and USA for the next 10 to 20 years, as well as in the emerging countries in the next 30 years. To finance growth, the founders family needed investors and started to look for the appropriate partner.

13. POSSIBLE WAYS
Partnership with an Italian steel construction manufacturer
Partnership with a German machinery manufacturer (complementary products)
Partnership with a big German construction company
Partnership with a smaller German construction company
Partnership with a Swiss construction company,
a 100 years old FAMILY BUSINESS

14. OUR CHOICE Same mentality Same culture Same values
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
Same mentality
Same culture
Same values
Direct contact with the CEO
Mutual support
Same objectives

15. ENTRY PROCESS
The company WALO respected our necessity of financing the company growth and the contemporary concern about loosing power within the company and agreed to a progressive acquiring of shares, leaving us the majority for at least 5 years. A big difference to the big concerns offering a 51% participation and immediate integration in their systems!

16. NEW BIG FAMILY
In his speech after the signing of the contract, Mr. Bertschinger (WALO CEO) expressed his satisfaction for reaching his grandfather’s dream: manufacturing of innovative machinery. This will come true with Kern Tunneltechnik! After 5 months of cooperation we now feel as a big family and are already working on new projects together.

17. CONCLUSION
Our interpretation of family business is a wider concept: the combination of a traditional big family business with a young and powerful founder’s family. This is for us the key to success in the construction industry: the boosting entrepreneurial power of a start-up, supported by the experience and the financial strength of a long-established family concern.

18. P.S.:
Selling the company doesn’t mean blowing out the entrepreneurial spirit: the next project is already at the start!