Doors on rails – successful business with innovations
Another recognition for the team and production of Secdoor, this time, on the pages of Economist magazine, 07.05.2018
“Doors on rails – successful business, underlined by innovations”
At a first sight, the door is a prosaic element in the commercial or residential property. However, the door business can be full with poetry, as any other business. Sectional doors – sliding vertically and horizontally on rails, not long ago were not very popular in Bulgaria and even in Europe. The two brothers – Dimitar Dimitrov and StoyanTroshev of Shumen started the assembly of such doors in Plovdiv and currently, they are on the way to build a second factory there.
The import was just the beginning
The initiator of the family business is the elder brother, Dimitar (43 years), who in 1997 started the initiative with a relative of his. “We started to import logistics systems from the Netherlands and one of the products in these systems were the sectional doors. Together with them, we imported loading and unloading ramps and other equipment. In the very beginning, we made some very goods sales in Plovdiv and Pazardzhik and we had some Greek companies among our first customers”, Dimitar is recalling the beginning. During the first year, his business model was only to import a ready product, i.e. doors. However, the practice and “things of life” changed the situation. A truck hit one of the installed doors and the entrepreneurs were forced to replace part of it. “We faced great difficulties, because the required part was supposed to be manufactured in the Netherlands and to be delivered to Bulgaria, to be replaced by us and the costs for our customers were very high. At that moment, we decided to look for a company, which produces elements and to start importing them and somebody to teach us to assemble them in a factory in Bulgaria”, Dimitar continues the story.
The search for such company took a long time, while finally, they found it in Belgium. For six months, the Bulgarian entrepreneurs were trained at that company of how to assemble doors elements.
StoyanTroshev (36 years) joins to the business undertaking of his brother in 2005, after studying for 5 years at a college in Boston, where he graduated with a Bachelor degree in business and entrepreneurship. In 2001, his brother has already started the first production line for sectional doors assembly in Plovdiv.
About 70% of the doors were intended for industry – factories, storehouses, repair shops, and the rest – for domestic applications – for houses, garages, closed residential complexes etc. The entire range of drives for these doors was imported from Germany. Apart from that, the brothers offer logistics equipment, fire-resistant doors, the so-called high-speed doors for industry, which form part of very busy production processes and are highly automated.
