Onninen

The company was founded on February 19, 1913 in Turku by Alfred Onninen.

In 1912, the young Alfred Onninen and his family arrived in Turku , where he bought a wooden building located on a large plot of land in the city center.

He immediately began planning the construction of a stone building. Construction at that time was actively developing. Due to the lack of plumbing materials, the installation of heating pipes in the new building could not be completed before the onset of winter frosts. Then the entrepreneurial man himself became a supplier of plumbing equipment and work resumed. The new company was registered in the administrative court of Turku on February 19, 1913.

Three years later, the company expanded to OY Alfred Onninen AB, a limited liability company owned by three partners.

In subsequent years, this area continued to be in demand, water supply specialists became more organized, and new technologies began to be applied at construction sites. After changing the name - from “Water Supply and Heating Pipes Company” to OY Alfred Onninen AB - the company continued its development. In 1919, the company was faced with the need to move to a larger room and moved to a new five-story building on Kauppiaskatu in Turku .

Soon the company needed a qualified accountant. The son-in-law of Alfred Onninen, the husband of his eldest daughter, Theodor Andell, was chosen for this position. Theodor Andell also bought shares from Alfred's two previous partners.

In the 1920s, the company was going through good times. The area of ​​activity expanded and reached Helsinki , where in 1927 the water company Vesijohtoliike Onninen OY was registered as a legal entity. Two years later, activities in Turku became a subsidiary, and the old company was liquidated.

In the fall of 1928, after a successful start, the Great Depression began to affect the company's activities. Competition intensified. But thanks to the involvement of civil engineers as small shareholders, the company managed to survive this time with only insignificant losses. However, after some time, such a model became uncomfortable, and the company began to increase its share by buying back the shares.

The 1930s became the “golden age” for Onninen. Along with the development of contract work, Andell saw opportunities to generate a steady income from trade. And in the annual report for 1938 it was stated that "the main profit was obtained from wholesale sales, the volume of installation work also increased."

Improving living standards meant improving living conditions, and people wanted to see higher quality equipment in their kitchens and bathrooms. This circumstance sharply increased Onninen's turnover on the eve of the war. After mobilization in the fall of 1939, many work had to be interrupted halfway. And due to a shortage of labor and building materials, the price of the little that was still under construction has risen.

However, even the war did not stop the business completely, and instead of branches in Lahti and Oulu in 1943, new companies were established. It was at this time that management shifted markedly from Alfred from Turku to Andell in Helsinki .

The post-war reconstruction was initially restrained by a terrible lack of materials, since for a long time the industry providing military reparations had priority in procurement. However, even during these years, Onninen achieved quite sufficient profits, especially in the Helsinki area. In 1946, the turnover was 10 million euros (almost 65 million Finnish marks). Less than 20% of this amount was the branch’s contribution to Turku .

In the 1950s , a debate arose about the future of the company. The question was: should the organization continue to work as a whole, or should the property be divided. The organization then included subsidiaries in the cities of Kouvola , Imatra and Pori - a network covering the main population centers of Finland.

Theodor Andell, who had by this time changed his name to Finnish Martti Auriala, had been consolidating his position for a long time, but he only became Executive Director of Vesijohtoliike Onninen OY in 1950 after the death of Alfred Onninen. The distribution of property began towards the end of the same year. The shares went to Alfred's widow - Olga - and their three children - Maikki, Aulis and Mirjam. The assets were divided in such a way that Auriala, who had already used his middle name by this time, and his family owned most of Vesijohtoliike Onninen OY's shares, and the branch in Turku was sold to a new company. The shares of this company went to the Aulis Onninen family. Leiwos, the family of Onninen's youngest daughter, Mirjam, received most of the shares of Lahden Onninen OY.

When conditions returned to normal, water supplies became more affordable. Oil and district heating developed rapidly, and technological progress transformed the installation business. Wholesalers have mastered global logistics. Onninen's turnover was constantly increasing. However, fierce competition among customers has led some to have difficulty paying and bad debts. In 1954, the company first suffered net losses in its entire 40-year history. This is partly due to the fact that, by agreement of the owners of the company, sales to formal subsidiaries were reduced. In addition, the turnover in the city of Turku decreased, and some large customers went bankrupt.

Erik (Erkki) Toivanen It's time to transfer responsibilities to a new talent, such as Erik (Erkki) J. Toivanen, the husband of Auriala's daughter Anja, who joined the company in 1953. His career was long and extremely successful both for Onninen and personally for him.

In 1956, when Toivanen was only 29 years old, he followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law, becoming the managing director of Onninen, and immediately began to implement his plans for the development of the company. One of these plans was to expand the network of shopping centers. Since communications were still underdeveloped, the success of wholesale sales depended on the ability to serve customers from local warehouses. With the prospect, Onninen began to develop service for municipal factories and industrial enterprises as well as traditional installation organizations. At the same time, steps were taken to create a network for new sales and staff training.

In the 1960s, Lahden Onninen gradually returned Vesijohtoliike Onninen to its property. The network grew and now covered the cities of Varkaus, Vaasa, Pietarsaari and Kokkola, as well as the city of Turku , where representative offices and wholesale warehouses were opened. Warehouse space was also purchased in Hyvinkaa. Along with territorial expansion and sales growth, in the late 1950s, Onninen began construction of a new office building in Helsinki on Kuortaneenkatu. After completion of construction, the company received 3,000 cubic meters of new storage space. In 1963, when the company celebrated its 50th anniversary, Vesionninen - as the company was now called - worked in 9 cities.

The company's turnover, which in 1955 (the year before Toivanen became executive director) was more than 20 million euros (about 130 million marks), doubled in four years, and almost quadrupled by 1963. Profit was also satisfactory, and the company was able to create a reserve fund. Vesionninen grew and became a major and noteworthy player in the pipeline business.

The 1960s and 1970s in Finland were times of urban migration. The construction of concrete structures has become commonplace, and this has meant the introduction of new technologies and new products, such as plastic pipes. Ventilation was widespread, and in 1969 Onninen began to engage in wholesale and installation of ventilation equipment in the city of Tampere . In 1972, the Onninen division in Imatra and Kouvola returned to the company, which now had branches throughout the country. During the same year, an important step was taken into the future - the beginning of wholesale sales and installation of electrical equipment. At this stage, the organization was based on fields of activity independent from each other, in which both wholesale and installation were under the same management.

International trade also began to develop. In the mid-70s, self-service centers first implemented a project to export plumbing, ventilation and refrigeration equipment to the Soviet Union and later to the Middle East .

In 1971, 860 employees worked at Onninen, but two years later, 1,300 employees were paid, and by 1976 almost 2,000 people were on the payroll. With the increase in the number of employees, the need for new premises arose, and in 1977 more funds were spent for these purposes than ever before. More than 100 thousand cubic meters of warehouses and office premises were under construction in different parts of the country. Along with the expansion of the company, the reduction of the least profitable types of business began.

By 1980, the former head office was cramped. A new location was found in Vantaa, where the construction of a regional warehouse and head office began. These investments were the largest in the history of the company: 110 thousand cubic meters of storage and 32500 cubic meters of office space in a 5-story building. But the time for moving to new premises was chosen unsuccessfully, as this happened in extremely crisis years (1984-1985). The volume of wholesale trade in technical materials began to recover only in 1987.

The development of logistics and information technology has created the basis for optimizing activities and finding the best approach to the needs and expectations of customers. One of the innovations was the opening of the first Pikaonninen store in the premises of the former head office. By the end of 1986, 8 Pikaonninen stores were already operating in different parts of Finland. In the spring of 1996, regular customer cards were introduced, which gave discounts on 3 thousand products presented in any Pikaonninen store.

However, in the late 1980s, Finland experienced another recession, which soon happened. Luckily for Onninen, the closure of small branches by that time had already been completed. Thus, the least profitable sectors that did not fit the overall picture did not affect profits. Onninen was well protected from economic downturns, as Erkki Toivanen, who became the permanent chairman of the Onninen board of directors, noted in the 1990-1991 annual report. Timo Peltola succeeded Timwan Pole as Managing Director, and although the recession continued, the company had never suffered a net loss.

International activity has evolved from export projects to the opening of subsidiaries and corporate mergers. The purpose of this activity was to gain a foothold in promising new markets. First, in 1992, an office was opened in Tallinn, Estonia. Then in 1993 - in St. Petersburg and Riga, and then in Vilnius. At the same time, it was decided to establish a new company in Warsaw.

Companies were bought both in Finland and abroad, including Hydrokan Winkiel in Poland and Danfoss AB's share in wholesale of refrigeration equipment in Prokyl in Sweden, Are OY in Finland and Onninen's competitor OY Huber AB in wholesale of sanitary and ventilation equipment . These mergers meant a large-scale restructuring. For example, Are began to work as an installation company in its present form only in 1995.

International expansion contributed to the further development of the company.

In the mid-90s, customer service began using the cash-and-carry system, and the number of shopping centers increased significantly. In 1997, it was decided to modernize the Onninen Group corporate structure, which already owned 9 subsidiaries. The former company was renamed Onvest, and warehouses, debtors, commercial agreements and personal property were transferred to a new legal entity, which continued to be called Onninen.

Onninen has entered the new millennium as a modern provider of complete logistics solutions for managing its customers' materials, operating on the vast Baltic Sea coast. In the 21st century, the company continues to work, paying particular attention to the expectations of its customers, expanding its activities, internationalization and new service concepts - as it was in the history of the company.

Maarit Toivanen-Koivisto followed in the footsteps of her father and in 2000 became chairman of the Onninen board of directors. And in 2001, Petteri Wallden succeeded Timo Peltola as Managing Director.

In 2002, Onninen Group entered the Norwegian market and immediately became a leader in the sale of electrical equipment through the acquisition of Eilag Teknikk AS. In 2002, Onninen's turnover amounted to 1 billion euros. More than half of this amount is the turnover of foreign divisions of the company (more than half of all Onninen employees work outside Finland).

The organizational structure of Onninen Group involves the division into geographical territories, as well as functions.

Geography Onninen Group:

Finland

Russia

Sweden

Norway

Poland

Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

Onninen Group Features:

Finance

IT

Personnel Management

Marketing and communications

Jurisprudence

The main processes at Onninen Group are Sales, Purchasing and Logistics.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Onninen - Maarit Toivanen-Koivisto, Master of Economics (member of the Board of Directors since 1998, Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2000).

Onninen Group Board of Directors:

Prof. Eero Eloranta (Member of the Board of Directors since 2000)

Mr. Karsten Slotte, President, Fazer Group (Member of the Board of Directors since 2001)

Mr. Juha Järvinen, Master of Economics (Member of the Board of Directors since 2006)

Onninen conducts business in eight countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Today, Onninen Group has 3,200 employees. Onninen's turnover in 2008 was 1.75 billion euros.

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