My name is Egils Vetra. Ten years ago, I started with 3 people and today 35 people is working in Eveko Printing Company. 

Our company produces everything. We can produce from small business cards till bigger things like books, posters or whatever. We do everything what a client need, but of course there is some popular products in what we do. 

We do a lot of calendars in the end of the year and we do a lot of straight printings from straight clients, like supermarkets, local music companies and we print a lot of notebooks, as well. I’m the sales manager and I have been working here for more than five years. 

I came here to work with exports, so it’s about four years ago I started to work with exports and of course, with local markets, but direction is to get more export from my side.

Mostly we work with direct (straight) clients actually, but if we speak about exports, then we work mostly with agencies and with brokers, something like that. Not so many straight customers are coming from export, but I would love to get some, of course.

Action! 

It was very difficult the first time when I came to this company, because I had a small printing agency and one printing company was bankrupt, yes. I started here in this house, but it was a very small room and now I have 2.000 square meters.

Local market, local – because I have friends in Latvia, big companies, marketing companies and I grew up with a friend that help me getting business. This friend helps my business and year after year my company have grown.

Yes, 90% is local market, but export is important, sure.

Slowly, slowly, I think for all business, for all exports and local marketing, our company wants to grow with more export and yes, I can see it, because we want to buy bigger machine, bigger possibilities.

Bigger machines. 

So, I can give a better offer to my customers abroad and the smallest terms to produce that.

All customers, every year’s business is increasing, yes.

For the moment, here in Riga business is starting better for our company and the companies around us. I don’t think so that the prices will go down for the moment. I think the prices will be the same, I really hope they do not go up, as well. Paper industries are the same, the prices for paper are not going up, so I don’t think so that within one year, prices will go up – no, I don’t. 

Our company Eveko, as my boss Egils says, that we live like you know, like a business friends, let’s call it that. So all our clients is probably friends, or friends of friends, so this means that we do not call everybody around. The contacts are coming and it’s really good for a business, I think. 

As we work here with the locals and local companies local people though I sometimes even have seen the people for half a year, eventhough we live in one country. So I can’t see a big problem with communication in export. 

We print a lot of things, our customers – they trust us. We can offer a good price, we can offer good service, we can offer a good quality – everything together around, you know? Sometimes we make crazy things, as we never do normally, but as we love our customers, so this is the business how we do. Yes, our company is very good as I mean, in calendar productions. We are very good in books, in CD things; we are very good in booklets and a lot of advertising products, which you need very fast. There are no limits and quantities for us – I can do one small thing and I can make a lot of millions, I don’t know, what you need. We make the things – if you need, we will find a way how to do that. This I think is the best what I can say for: “Why clients come to us?” Because I know even there will be no time, no money, but we did that. 

Last year, a lot of people know Riga was capital of European City, so we made a lot of productions for them. One of them is this kind of book, like a Calendar, where you can see all the good things that happened in Riga – every year, all exhibitions, everything. So, we print a lot of this kind of things. 

Here I have books – my boss, our boss is a musician, so we really love to make things for people, for music and we print a lot of notebooks. So, there you can see how we bind that, we make CDs and so on, things. We print everything here. If you come and you asked me, I will do everything here. It’s not going out from my printing house, we can do everything here. So, it’s a very good for export, as well, it is good for all clients, because they know that when they come, they trust me so and I do here, locally. So, I see all the steps and I can control everything, so it’s very good. 

Quality control in Eveko is very important, because even for local people, for markets and even for export, because for export people bring product and if they take them and it’s very bad, so it’s not very good. Because it’s… I can’t. Quality is very important for Eveko Company, even for locals and more than for export, because exports people bring the production in a terms, so if there is something wrong, there is no time to change something. So, we do a lot of things to control all production and of course we have a FSC certificate for paper and some local’s certificate. 

I think, yes. It’s not so hard business, if you have good colleagues and partners and friends – not so hard. I think, yes.