Factory, Founder, Future
Narbutas targets the next level
The name is on the building, on the factory, on the furniture. And on a lot of labels. At Narbutas, the company name is not just a brand. It is also a biography.
The Lithuanian office furniture manufacturer has now released a long YouTube conversation with founder Petras Narbutas. Not a glossy corporate film with polished slogans. More a walk through the company’s own history: production halls, figures, memories of the turbulent early years after the end of the Soviet Union – and one sentence that sticks. Narbutas wants to move to the next organisational level.
That is where the news value lies. Not in the fact that a furniture manufacturer has published a video. But in the fact that a now relevant European player in the workplace market is publicly explaining how it thinks about its next phase.
Narbutas started in the early 1990s with computer desks. Today, the company no longer sees itself as a classic producer of office workstations. In the conversation, Petras Narbutas describes a very broad and deeply integrated manufacturing operation. Almost everything is made in-house, with exceptions including chair mechanisms and plastic injection moulding.
The in-house production, he says, is “very deep, very wide”. In principle, one could speak of “five factories under one roof”. Around 200 work centres have to be kept evenly utilised. On a full-truck basis, about 30 trucks leave the factory each day. According to Narbutas, that currently corresponds to about 700,000 euros per day.
That is not just a neat production figure. It also explains why Narbutas is increasingly being taken seriously in the European contract and office market. While many suppliers outsource production steps, Narbutas appears to be doubling down on depth, speed and control. Larger orders, Narbutas says in the conversation, can be manufactured within a few days and delivered together.
The film becomes particularly interesting when Narbutas talks about strategy. The founder does not simply say: we want to grow. He describes the transition into a more professional phase: processes, projects, decisions based on information, strategic planning. For a long time, the strategy had largely been in his head. Now the task is to capture it more systematically.
This is also where the big ambition appears: becoming number one in Europe. At first, that sounds like a very bold claim. In the conversation, however, it feels less like a loud attack on the industry and more like an internal target image intended to align the organisation. Narbutas says the company does not necessarily have to be first in every individual product category. If it ranks high in several categories, that can add up to an overall leading position.
The name is on the building, on the factory, on the furniture. And on a lot of labels. At Narbutas, the company name is not just a brand. It is also a biography.
The Lithuanian office furniture manufacturer has now released a long YouTube conversation with founder Petras Narbutas. Not a glossy corporate film with polished slogans. More a walk through the company’s own history: production halls, figures, memories of the turbulent early years after the end of the Soviet Union – and one sentence that sticks. Narbutas wants to move to the next organisational level.
That is where the news value lies. Not in the fact that a furniture manufacturer has published a video. But in the fact that a now relevant European player in the workplace market is publicly explaining how it thinks about its next phase.
Narbutas started in the early 1990s with computer desks. Today, the company no longer sees itself as a classic producer of office workstations. In the conversation, Petras Narbutas describes a very broad and deeply integrated manufacturing operation. Almost everything is made in-house, with exceptions including chair mechanisms and plastic injection moulding.
The in-house production, he says, is “very deep, very wide”. In principle, one could speak of “five factories under one roof”. Around 200 work centres have to be kept evenly utilised. On a full-truck basis, about 30 trucks leave the factory each day. According to Narbutas, that currently corresponds to about 700,000 euros per day.
That is not just a neat production figure. It also explains why Narbutas is increasingly being taken seriously in the European contract and office market. While many suppliers outsource production steps, Narbutas appears to be doubling down on depth, speed and control. Larger orders, Narbutas says in the conversation, can be manufactured within a few days and delivered together.
The film becomes particularly interesting when Narbutas talks about strategy. The founder does not simply say: we want to grow. He describes the transition into a more professional phase: processes, projects, decisions based on information, strategic planning. For a long time, the strategy had largely been in his head. Now the task is to capture it more systematically.
This is also where the big ambition appears: becoming number one in Europe. At first, that sounds like a very bold claim. In the conversation, however, it feels less like a loud attack on the industry and more like an internal target image intended to align the organisation. Narbutas says the company does not necessarily have to be first in every individual product category. If it ranks high in several categories, that can add up to an overall leading position.