Péter Laki, Owner and Company Manager
Péter Laki originally started out making wallpaper trims for wallpapering his family’s home, but he got so into it that he continued casting in his grandparents’ basement and then made moulds. He took them, along with his landline phone number, to the wallpaper shops Ápisz and Azúr, in case anyone might be interested. And so they were; orders quickly came in, and the selection grew as he brought new samples from the West as a national hockey player.
By 1989, he had 30 employees, five or six Zhiguli estate cars for his contractor teams and was already driving a car from the West, which was a big deal at the time. The changes after the fall of communism could not break Péter Laki’s momentum and, with his first million forint which he had collected by then, he opened a showroom at the Buda side of the Margaret Bridge. At first, he was probably the only one with any vision for architectural sculpture so, by the time the competition appeared, the name LAKI was a well-known brand in the construction industry.
“In the beginning, we worked mainly on villas in Buda. The news spread by word of mouth, and one job followed another”, said Péter Laki. The competitiveness of the company also came from observing the rules of the game on his travels to the West and trying to organise work accordingly in Hungary, so that after 1989 his business was in fact fully compliant with the then nascent market economy.
Until 1998, the development was uninterrupted, with more and more serious orders, such as the renovation of the Vígszínház in 1994. After a while, Péter Laki noticed that the best professionals in the country, including his former teachers, were happy to work for him. And although there have been low points, the Russian crisis of 1998 and later the global economic crisis of 2008 did not hit the company hard, but the company managed to overcome them by temporarily cutting back salaries or sending employees for further training. But it has also helped that the manager is trying to move forward in a measured way. “I put on my trousers, fasten my belt, clip up my suspenders and, just to be on the safe side, I even put my hands in my pockets to make sure my trousers don’t fall down”, says the owner, who also relies mostly on post-financing from external sources, and this is not an everyday thing either. So far he has thus managed to avoid major setbacks; in hindsight, however, he says it was often this over-cautiousness that caused him to miss out on major op- portunities, which he would do differently today. “In hindsight, of course, it’s easy to be clever and the pain of lost profit is never the same as real loss…”
“In the early 2000s, we thought we could also take part in general contracting. There was one area of expertise in which we already had considerable experience and the contacts.
This has given rise to the renovation of monuments, in which, moreover, the battle for positions is not so strong, as many people, quite rightly, steer clear of this segment. It’s different from a greenfield project; the building itself is worth ten times more than the value of the contract. All it takes is for a sloppy worker to accidentally drill into a fresco and you’re in trouble”, he points out. Time has proved this market segment to be a good idea and the timing is good, as recent governments have put and are putting a particular emphasis on preserving the built heritage, so there is also work to be done.
This is also why the shutdowns due to the coronavirus did not significantly affect the company: public investments did not stop, and although 10% to 20% of the employees were forced to quarantine, the team did well in their home offices and on-site.
“The company is growing, but not at all costs. People like working for us, because it’s a team effort and the work is pro- fessionally interesting. Many of my current colleagues used to work for my clients, well-known construction companies that have since closed down. I know exactly how they feel about the people who work with us.”, said Peter Laki. Nowadays, the structure looks as follows: LAKI Épületszobrász Zrt., which specialises in building renovation, is at the centre, and around it are strategic companies that deal with, for example, stone carving, carpentry, stucco or stained glass. These, headed by trustworthy and well-interested managers, have been almost entirely left to their own devices by the CEO. The current success is now as much about employees under good leadership as it is about LAKI. In addition, they also have businesses that invest the profits generated in other areas, whether it be the development of a car park, an office building or accommodation, primarily for rental purposes.
Péter Laki expects some natural growth in the next five years, which he has no intention of limiting, but he does not want to raise the construction company to a much higher level, as a sudden increase in volume would inevitably be at the expense of a well-established structure.
“In addition to my daily business thinking, I have two other tasks.
One is to be able to run my business in the future with as little of my personal added value as possible. This is an operational task and I consider it important, primarily for the sake of my mental and physical freedom. The other is to find a regulated system that does not limit the development of the company but prevents (or significantly slows down) the ‘wasting away’ of the company, and this is a legal task”, says the CEO. He doesn’t see enough of his five children’s abilities yet, which is why he wants to run companies in different sectors and make them as self-sufficient as possible, so that maybe they will find a job that suits their interests and abilities more easily. These solutions can serve both the present and the future, because although he considers himself very lucky, he believes that neither the present nor the future can be built on this alone.