RIVAL’s foreign envoy 

Export manager Jesper Andersen has contributed to the success of the RIVAL® adjustable calibrating sleeve in Australia, and if it is up to him, the rest of the world will soon follow.

Jesper's suitcase is called Fido. It is taken out for an airing between 70 and 80 days of the year. The trips go to Australia, the Middle East and the Far East, where RIVAL has success with its adjustable calibrating sleeves. Jesper has just returned from two weeks in Australia, where he visited pipe manufacturers all over the continent.

Each day he checked into a new hotel in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Waga Waga, which is located way out in the bush. In only a couple of years, Jesper has managed to get three of Australia's largest pipe manufacturers as our customers. The RIVAL® adjustable calibrating sleeve is more widely known in Australia than anywhere else in the world.

Good experiences
“That makes it much easier to arrange meetings with potential customers. Everybody watches what the largest manufacturers do, and they have good experiences with our adjustable calibrating sleeve, which saves them money on purchases of raw materials for the production. Between one and two per cent. That may not sound like much, but if you purchase EUR 50 million worth of materials per year, it adds up to EUR 1 million a year in savings, and who can say no to that?” asks Jesper with a grin. The whole world has been his workplace since he left the shipping industry ten years ago to accept a job as regional export manager at Sciteq.

Debut as a commercial traveller
“My travel experience was limited to package holidays, so it was baptism by fire when I was sent to Egypt on one of my first trips. But it went well and I landed a contract, and since then I have worked as a commercial traveller,” says Jesper.

It was with this background he in 2002 joined RIVAL as export manager with responsibility for increasing the sale of RIVAL’s adjustable calibrating sleeve. Since then, the turnover of the calibrating sleeve has increased from EUR 3 million to EUR 10 million.

Special RIVAL spirit
A lot has also happened internally in the company. When Jesper was employed, RIVAL had 22 employees and today it has 45. “We are, of course, no longer like one big family as we were then, but the special spirit that characterises RIVAL still prevails. We respect each other's work and have a flat hierarchy.

In particular, we understand that we must supply top-quality products,” says Jesper, who has just been joined by a new colleague, Kenneth Rasmussen, who will be responsible for Eastern Europe and the USA – new focus areas for RIVAL.

Once Jesper has recharged his batteries after his trip to Australia, he will be off to Ukraine and later Saudi Arabia. However, first he and his family are going skiing in Austria, where they have rented a chalet. For, as he says: “I see enough hotels in my everyday life.”

>> Everybody watches what the largest manufacturers do and they have good experiences with our calibrating sleeve, which saves them money on purchases of raw materials for the production. Between one and two per cent. That may not sound like much, but if you purchase EUR 50 million worth of materials per year, it adds up to EUR 1 million a year in savings. <<

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