Although its kremšnita and bermet are irresistible, Samobor is much more than a place where Zagreb residents escape for the weekend to stroll along Vugrinščak or visit the Old Town. It is a city that has been winning the title of the best large city in Croatia for the economy for several years, and along with economic success, it also successfully achieves other goals, such as social and infrastructural ones.
It is eternally spring in a place whose entrepreneurial climate truly continuously flourishes and develops, as evidenced by many small, medium, and large companies in Samobor and its surroundings that achieve better results and expand their business year after year. From the food industry and textile production to construction companies and large manufacturers, it has stood out for generations as a city with diverse economic sectors. Its companies not only create jobs and promote local development but often participate in joint initiatives supporting local projects and socially responsible business.
Production in Samobor – and Indonesia
A small Samobor company is engaged in several segments of activities related to color. Thanks to its own development, it knows how to measure color, create a recipe for it, and finally produce it. It started as a representative of the largest global company that measures color, and today, 90 percent of regional companies producing textiles, paper, plastics, and paints and varnishes use the systems sold to them by Miltonia.
– As early as 1995, we discovered a new market segment that was developing at the time, the production of shades in paint and varnish stores or tinting. We developed our system and quickly sold it in all regional countries. Back then, I traveled to Serbia with a visa. The system was good, and after selling it to everyone locally, we expanded to Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Lebanon, and Syria. We developed our software. We bought spectral photometers in America, dispensers in the Netherlands, colorants in Italy, color cards in France, and packaged and sold them as our product. We successfully competed with multinational companies. Wherever we went, we sold. There were five of us then. And then we lost our first job – said Tomislav Jurlin, founder and CEO of Miltonia.
Regarding the lost job, Jurlin accepted it more as a lesson than a defeat. Namely, their French supplier could not deliver the color card on time in 2002, so from 2003, the Samobor company began its own production of those cards because they concluded that there was an uncovered segment in the market – exclusive, high-quality production of smaller series of such products.
– By continuously investing in people and technology, we have raised quality to the highest level. Today, twenty years later, we are among the ten largest in the world, recognized as the highest quality. We still sell dispensers and spectral photometers and maintain our 90 percent market share in the region, but our main business is the production of color cards. Otherwise, that is what the seller in the store shows you when you want to choose a shade for your wall or facade – explains Jurlin, whose company exports as much as 97 percent of its production; of that, he says, 50 percent goes to the European Union, and 50 percent to countries outside it.
