HOW THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC CHANGED OUR DIRECTION AND LAID THE FOUNDATION FORFUTURE SUCCESS
I will never forget the beginning of 2020 and how the coronavirus pandemic broke my business into pieces. One small part at a time. But this crisis also created the foundation for something new – a story of growth and success.
In early 2020, we were holding a sales summit with Aurinkotekniikka sales team at a sports center in southern Finland. During the days, we competed in sales challenges, and in the evenings, we pushed each other in the sports facilities. One thing stood out – the place was almost empty. After talking with the staff, I learned that a group of several hundred Chinese athletes had canceled their visit because of a virus outbreak in China. At that moment, I didn’t think much more about it.
A few weeks later, we attended a two-day seminar hosted by a major Finnish cleantech distributor. On the first day, I noticed the empty seats in the auditorium. I knew that several business owners had skipped the event because the virus had already reached Finland. On the second day of the seminar, the situation escalated. Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced a ban on large public gatherings. I did not know it yet, but just a few weeks later, the army would isolate southern Finland from the rest of the country.
Like every other industry, the solar market was hit hard by the pandemic. People became cautious, and big investments like solar panels were suddenly a low priority. For a business with +20 employees, this was a serious problem. Orders stopped coming in, and our order books quickly emptied. We soon found ourselves in a situation where no money was coming in, but the costs remained the same.
With a heavy heart, I had to face the facts. There were no new sales, and the market did not show any signs of a quick recovery. I could not justify keeping my sales team. I made the difficult decision to let them go. Same people I had been competing against in the sports center just a few months earlier.
The changes we had to make shook the company to its core. Until that point, I had owned half of the company, and my business partner owned the other half. But with all the challenges of that spring, it became clear that we were heading in different directions. I believed I could turn the company around, so I decided to buy out my partner and take full ownership of Aurinkotekniikka. At the same time, I established a professional board for the company. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Our installation team was still rock solid. I knew that if I could just keep them busy, the small streams of revenue from each job would be enough to keep the business running. But I did not believe that any single organization could give us enough work. We needed multiple partners. Many small streams to form a river. So, we worked like crazy, contacting our biggest competitors and convincing them to let us handle their installations. One by one, we managed to turn their heads. We got one partner, then another, and soon we had a long list of partners.
I also took a big risk. The year before, we had launched our RAULI mounting systems and started selling them to other companies. I made the choice to go all in on this opportunity. So far, we had only sold RAULI in Finland, where many companies were struggling. I knew that if we wanted RAULI to become a pillar of our business, we had to expand beyond our borders.
What happened next? Well, our revenue dropped by 28% in 2020, but we survived. The following year, our newly rebuilt business started to gain momentum. By then, we had a reputation as an honest and professional company, which opened new doors. In late 2021, we expanded into consulting, helping secure land for utility-scale solar parks.
In 2022, the energy crisis hit, and the solar market took off like a rocket. Thanks to the steps we took during the pandemic, we still had a large network of partners, and the small streams of work we had found in 2020 turned into fast-flowing rivers. We tripled our revenue in 2022 and grew another 12% the following year. By then, more than 50 people were wearing the Aurinkotekniikka uniform every day.
As the market grew across Europe, RAULI also took off internationally. In 2024, RAULI was separated from Aurinkotekniikka as its own company through a partial demerger.
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