Ákos Kovács, Róbert Kovács, Róbert Kovács Junior, dr. Loránd Barkassy-Grünfeld, management members

Some Hungarian family businesses are good at finding market niches. The more able ones become medium-sized companies, but only those that build a strong export base will stay afloat in the long term. Just like Aquacomet, a swimming pool technology company that now has more than HUF 8 billion in sales revenue and has entered major Western markets for pool covers and composite pools. Pool covers are made of aluminium and polycarbonate, both individually and in larger series. Over 4,000 of these will be produced in 2021.

Róbert Kovács, who now lives in Budapest, and his son, Róbert Kovács junior, were doing other things at the time of the political changes in 1989-1990. The story is told by the third generation of the family, the younger grandson, Loránd. He is now one of the leaders of the group, together with his brother Ákos.

Loránd’s grandfather was a chief engineer at Tungsram in Győr, and his father was a forestry engineer and economist. And at the end of the 1980s, the path to business opened up for agile engineers like them. True, his father, Róbert Kovács Jr., did not start with swimming pool technology: as a career-abandon- ing forestry engineer, he first wrote accounting and business software in the 1980s, for the then emerging IBM personal computer operating system, which was even used by the giant Videoton.

At that time, HUF 6-8,000 was an outstanding salary for an engineer, but Róbert Kovács Jr. earned more than HUF 400,000 in software royalties from a few months of entrepreneurial activity. After the political changes in 1989-1990, the Silicon Valley giants arrived in Hungary, so new entrepreneurial activi- ties had to be found. The new company started out providing engineering services and then shifted to swimming pool technology by visiting trade fairs and exhibitions in Austria and Germany. Consumer demand in this market was already high in the 1990s in Austria, which was an attractive destination for a company from Western Transdanubia.

Initially, they were engaged in trading foil-lined pools and pool equipment, and later in the manufacture of pool covers. For manufacturing, they bought a 700 m2 hall, which was previously used as a workshop for servicing cars. The Austrian market was promising, yet they sold their first self-built pool cover in Hungary: in the early 1990s, the Hungarian Air Force ordered a cover for its pool at its Balaton resort. They manufac- tured their first self-made pool cover in the former garage and then delivered it.

By the end of the 1990s, however, it was clear that the real opportunities were in the more lucrative Western European markets, where a significant part of the cost of these structures was materials, but the cost advantage of domestic labour was so great that there was still a profit to be made on exports. In addition to its competitive advantage, Aquacomet has focused from the outset on quality in production and promotion to gain the trust of Western European customers.

The strategy worked. After an initial few dozen, by the mil- lennium they were producing 300-400 pool covers a year, in a much larger hall and with revenues of around half a billion forints. At that time, around four-fifths of the sales revenue came from exports, mainly from Austria. Shortly before Hunga- ry’s accession to the EU, however, they managed to conclude  a distributor agreement in Germany, so the march continued organically, but at a steady pace. The company has always operated largely from reinvested profits.

After the millennium, they were producing with around 60 people and were expanding significantly. In addition to deliv- eries to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, they also entered the French market around 2005- 2006, always through resellers. France is the largest market for swimming pool technology in Western Europe, with around one and a half million households having pools. And, as the pool has become a “hobby” for the strong middle class and new countries have entered the picture, Aquacomet barely felt the 2008 crisis and the period between 2008 and 2012 was one of uninterrupted growth. By this time, they were shipping to almost a dozen countries, with domestic sales accounting for only about a tenth of revenue.

Around 2012, Aquacomet also made inroads into the Swedish market with a range of easy-to-transport, multi-size, do-it-your- self pool covers called AQ Box. This product range has recently become increasingly popular in many markets. Almost 20 years ago, the company moved to the Győr Industrial Park, and nowadays production takes place on no less than 7 hectares of land, in six halls, on a total of more than 15,000 m2 of covered factory space.

The company’s projected sales revenue in 2021 exceeds HUF 8 billion, and this does not include the expected turnover of the German subsidiary, which is not yet consolidated and is expected to exceed EUR 10 million (around HUF 3.5 billion). So the business model that was set up in the beginning is now working well on a much larger scale.

Of course, the Covid epidemic has disrupted the market, but the present and the future are nonetheless about further dynamic growth: HUF 0.5 billion has recently been invested in a robotic powder coating plant, and HUF 2 billion has been invested in the last few years alone, while the aforementioned plant sites are the property of their own asset management company. With more than 4,000 pool covers produced, the group’s annual production capacity for ceramic pools will  reach 650 in 2021, but in the future the target for pools will also be several thousand per year, with the help of industrial painting robots and contract manufacturing in Eastern Europe. It is planned to relocate part of the production to Ukraine and to buy an industrial site near Cologne to establish a logistics and commercial centre. From there, they could also serve the French market more quickly and more cheaply, where they will also continue to sell their products through their own sub- sidiary. The Aquacomet Group’s growing presence in Western Europe is supported by more than 20 employees in Germany and France, in addition to its staff in Hungary. In addition to its current activities, they also plan to develop their service, consultancy and installation businesses.