Fosfa’s journey – customer service as a business driver

That’s why in July at Brain&Breakfast, he presented the transformation journey of his company – Frosta. He used it as an example of how to create a company management system as a living organism, with the goal of serving the customer.

“Josef Hartvich said that a person must have the courage to start a new life every day. And it’s precisely the courage to go through falls and the courage to get up and move forward that is key for me,” says Ivan Baťka.

Who is Ivan Baťka?

In 1988, he graduated from the University of Economics in Prague, majoring in foreign trade. In the 1990s, he started his own business, continuing the entrepreneurial tradition of his grandfather. In 1999, he founded Rádio Impuls, which he and his team developed into the country’s most listened-to nationwide radio station. Since 2002, he has been the CEO and chairman of the board of the family company Fosfa a.s.

Although he comes from a business family (his grandfather was a skilled textile worker), he had to start his business completely from scratch. He describes himself as a garage entrepreneur who had to go through everything and build it himself. He believes young people should learn to do business and succeed early on. Even those who come from families with companies they might one day take over. The courage to get back up after a fall can’t be handed to you; according to him, you have to experience it yourself and humbly set out on your own path forward. 

He took over Frosta when it was a business on the brink of collapse with only a local presence. Now it’s a global player with clearly defined values and principles that it won’t compromise, and a vision to do its work better than anyone else in the world. All of this is built on the fundamental idea that the company’s mission is to deliver the best service in the world to its customers. If they didn’t provide a service in demand, they would definitely go under. This, by the way, is an application of one of the principles of how nature functions to company management.