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On the roads between Slovakia and Britain

Despite the constant talk of crisis, there are some areas which have avoided it completely. Dušan Szöke, owner of the Dolphi Transport firm does business in one such area.

In Britain there are several firms that specialize in carrying parcels to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Has the crisis threatened their existence or actually helped them in some way as many people start to move home?
The crisis has not affected us in one way or the other and we’ve not noticed a significant increase in the numbers of people moving from the UK back to the Czech Republic or Slovakia. I am not saying people are not moving back but the increase in their numbers is not what you would expect given the crisis. And because the crisis has also been felt in Slovakia and the Czechlands, to leave the UK and come back to one of these countries just because the situation has worsened in Britain can be a bit like going from the frying pan into the fire. Of course I can only speak for our company but I suspect other companies have a similar experience to ours.

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In the last few years, the value of the pound has fallen sharply against the Czech crown and the euro. Has this caused you any problems?
To some extent. In providing our services, we work closely with companies from the Czech Republic and Slovakia and they invoice us for their services in Czech crowns and euros respectively. One result of the weakening of the pound’s exchange rate against these currencies is a sharp increase in our costs.
On the other hand, however, the weakening of the pound has made Britain more attractive as a country – it is a place where people can now shop relatively cheaply. So we have lots of new customers who travel to Britain to buy goods which they then sell in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

To collect goods from all over Britain, load them on to a lorry in London, transport them to a depot in the Czech Republic or Slovakia and then distribute them from there – this is, in a few words, the business model of companies like yours. Has this model changed at all in the last few years?
No, it is a model which has been working now for many years and so far no-one has come up with anything better. One alternative to it would be to replace road travel from the depot in Britain to the one in the Czech Republic with air transport. This would shorten the time of delivery by one or two days but would mean us having to raise our prices, which wouldn’t be popular with our customers.
According to research we did last year, customers prefer low prices to fast delivery. At present all consignments are delivered on day three after their departure from the UK. If we add to this the time it takes us to pick up the consignments from customers’ addresses around Britain, the whole transport takes from 4 to 7 days.
Some customers request us to deliver packages on a specific day. Not only can we can do this for them but we can also give them in advance the name and telephone number of the driver should they wish to contact him.
At the British end we give customers a two-hour time slot in which to come and pick up their consignment – this gives them opportunity to plant their time and means they don’t have to wait all day for it to arrive. We also have, of course, a package tracking system, which means you can follow the package’s movements on our webpages.

Your company has been in business now for several years. Have the things which people send changed over this time?
Not especially. Perhaps there are more parcels now of goods where there is a big price difference between Britain and the Czech Republic/Slovakia, or goods which are not sold in the latter countries – certain brand name clothes or electronics, for instance.
It looks like Slovaks and Czechs have discovered eBay – we’re getting more and more goods which have been auctioned there even though many sellers on eBay refuse to send goods outside the UK.

People usually send home goods which can fit in a box but I’ve also seen motorbikes and other unusual objects being sent. What are the strangest things which people send home or take with them to Britain?
In my view, one of the strangest things we’ve ever carried was a life-size model of Homer Simpson.
Once we were asked to transport some live pigeons but understandably we refused. The customer insisted that if we put them inside a box and left them some water, they would survive the journey to Slovakia.
I remember a colleague who collected parcels in the Manchester area. A few minutes after leaving one customer, he heard some strange sounds coming from the loading area of his vehicle. He stopped as soon as he could and was surprised to find a tomcat in amongst the boxes which he had loaded. Needless to say, he went back and ‘unloaded’ the cat.
Sometime in 2008 we got a call from the depot in Banská Bystrica, a colleague anxiously telling us that there were weird noises coming from one of the boxes and that he was thinking about calling the police. It turned out to be a children’s toy which the parents had forgotten to turn off when they were packing.

Transporting mainly personal possessions is a business which clearly has its limits. Do you sometimes transport other goods?
In principle we can provide transport of almost anything – we don’t concentrate only on parcels but also have regular customers who we carry loaded pallets, building materials, motorbikes and lounge suites for. We can also do full vehicle deliveries. We work together with several companies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and deliver goods to either their ‘stone’ or online outlets.

After years of crisis, the Slovak community in Britain is becoming more stable and this will affect the need to use parcel transport. Apart from this, do you have any other plans?
I don’t think the demand for parcel transport will fall in the next few years. As I mentioned earlier, though, we don’t concentrate only on moving people but also transport goods for several companies. According to unofficial statistics, there still live in the UK hundreds of thousands of Czechs and Slovaks. For us this is quite a strong target group.

Last year we launched another project www.nakupyvanglicku.sk enabling people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to buy goods in British e-shops and have them safely delivered to their homes. In the next few weeks we are going to change some features of this service to make it even more attractive to customers.

We do have a number of short-term goals but at the moment I would rather not specify them.

One of our long-term plans is to expand our services to other countries in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.