A taste for risk and something different ©Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek Johannes Gutmann says his unorthodox style was a differentiator for him and Sonnentor, his organics business When Johannes Gutmann began selling org­anic herbs and spices at local markets in the Waldviertel - a part of Austria that is big on woods and picturesque ruins, but less so on jobs and roads - his sales pitch was always the same: "Do you want to try something different?" Being different more or less sums up the philosophy of his company, Sonnentor. Since Mr Gutmann set up in 1988 as a jobless 23-year-old struggling to find a job that would allow him to stay in his native region, the business has grown to market produce from 150 or so organic farms in Austria under a common logo in 52 countries. Its biggest markets are Austria and Germany, but it also sells as far away as Japan. Mr Gutmann's reputation for eccentricity has played a big part in the company's success. First, it gave him the freedom to experiment: "Once your reputation's dead you can live without dread," he says, quoting Wilhelm Busch, the 19th-century German wit. Second, he adds, it was an ef­fective way of setting himself apart from rivals in his early forays into local markets. Austrians buying fresh vegetables, meat and cheese in the open-air market would need to have taken one look at Mr Gutmann to see he was offering something different. For in­stance, while some Austrians still wear traditional lederhosen occasionally, he always wears his own 90-year- old pair. In the strait-laced world of Austrian business, he plays up to his quirky reputation - whether with the lederhosen, the matching scarlet shoes and small round spectacles he wears everywhere, or the insouciance with which he makes unorthodox decisions, such as trading his €20,000 Audi for 2.5 tonnes of aniseed. "The other vendors were all standing there wearing identical suits made in Bangladesh, selling herbs they had bought as cheaply as possible that weren't even green any more," he explains in a modest meeting room at Sonnentor's base, about 120km from Vienna. And I stood there in my lederhosen and offered people something different: organic products that were freshly grown and from the region. In his own words Johannes Gutmann, founder of Sonnentor, on three big factors in his entrepreneurial success ● On the employees, who pack the teas and herbs by hand: "Our main competitor in Germany has a turnover of €35m and 80 employees. And we have sales of €25m and have 170 workers. For me that is our most impressive number. That is actually our unique selling point - the individual. They compete on price; we are selling an emotion. ● On building an image: "You just need an idea of how to present what you have . . . For example, for someone who sees my lederhosen, they are worth nothing. But they have a high non-material value: they are a story. And that works just as well on the world stage as at a market in the Waldviertel. ● On using crises: "A crisis offers the chance to do something new. It also brings the pressure, that if you don't change in the crisis, you will be changed. This focus on provenance - before it became popular - struck a chord with shoppers, and allowed Mr Gutmann to charge a premium. "In the first year, the turnover was €100,000, which was more than I needed to live, in the second €200,000, and so on," he says. The profits grew too, and as I didn't take any more out of the business than in the first year, I was able to finance my early investments [such as land] from my own capital. Mr Guttman is walking through the warehouse, where the tang of spices hangs in the air between towering racks of dried plants. He springs cheerfully in and out of various rooms, greeting the staff who are labelling and sorting packages - all of whom he addresses with the familiar "du" form. Besides being a good salesman, Mr Gutmann made two important strategic decisions. The first was to bet on the organic sector, which was just breaking out of its "crackpot" niche. The second was to prepare early for Austria's entry into the EU in 1995. I realised that the local farmers hadn't got the scale to compete in a market the size of the EU. The only way we could survive was to specialise - in types of herbs and spices which it takes expertise to grow," he says. Between 1995 and 1996, Sonnentor's revenues rose from €1.1m to €2.2m, and Mr Gutmann doubled his workforce by hiring six new employees. Last year, Sonnentor had grown to 170 employees and revenues of €24.7m. Austria's support systems for entrepreneurs also helped. Mr Gutmann started with a €15,000 loan from the local chamber of commerce, with interest payments at half the market rate. "I didn't have to provide any collateral and my business plan fitted on an A4-sheet of paper," he says. Nor did he suffer problems with red tape. This account of the relative ease with which he was able to start and then develop the business makes the lack of entrepreneurs in Austria baffling. The explanation, Mr Gutmann suspects, is cultural: "Austrians are classic officials. What they know about is how to cut costs or build structures. To do something new, however, requires a degree of levity, an ability to make instinctive decisions and a willingness to take risks - qualities he feels are not fostered in Austria. Mr Gutmann, though, says he has them in spades: "If I had lived in the Stone Age, I would have been the first one to be eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger." Except for a brief experiment with Austrian discount chain Hofer, Sonn­entor always sold to specialist organic shops rather than supermarkets, whether in Austria, which accounts for 25 per cent of sales, or in Germany, which takes about half. The main reason is that supermarkets want goods in timespans that are incompatible with Sonnentor's model of packaging and labelling by hand. More recently, however, the organic market has been consolidating. Since 2007 Sonnentor has set up 12 franchises in Austria and one in Munich, in an attempt to avoid being squeezed out by bigger players. This year, the company's predicted 20 per cent growth in Austria will be due to its franchise network. Sonnentor has caught the eye of potential buyers, but Mr Gutmann has no intention of selling. In that, he is typical of the Mittelstand, the midsized businesses that form the backbone of the German and Austrian econ­omies. There is also a lot he still wants to do, however. His latest idea concerns gastronomy. At Sonnentor's base, work on a restaurant that will cater for its 35,000 visitors a year is already under way. Mr Gutmann envisages others too. The timing does seem a little odd: Austrians are coping with Europe's economic woes better than most of their peers, but consumer spending is still cautious and even Viennese restaurants complain of slow business. Mr Gutmann is undaunted, however, and believes the qualities that appealed to the shoppers in farmers" markets can win him new ones in restaurants too. "If people go into a restaurant and can get fresh, local products, they like it," he says. Regional origin and transparency are very important selling points in gastronomy.