17. August 2023
// Customers & Partners
Modern hospital beds for the dreamland on the Adriatic Sea
Successful start for our new sales partner Karl Dietz in Croatia
Croatia is a dream country - the blue Adriatic, the picturesque towns, the delicious food, the friendly people. And for the Stiegelmeyer Group, the dream is now coming true to actively participate in the modernisation of health care in this beautiful region. With our new partner Karl Dietz Kijevo d.o.o., we have already been able to place several hundred hospital beds and bedside cabinets on the Croatian market in a very short time. We spoke with Ivan Petković, Hospital Sales Manager, during a visit to Herford.
Karl Dietz is one of the most successful medical device companies in Croatia with 72 employees, 3 own production facilities and 7 sales locations. The German name is explained by a connection with the Baden-Württemberg company DIETZ Rehab. The company was founded in Kijevo, 80 kilometres north of the port city of Split. In the meantime, the headquarters have moved to the neighbouring town of Knin, picturesquely situated in the mountains of Dalmatia and overlooked by a well-known fortress ruin. Nearby is the Dinara, Croatia's highest mountain at 1,831 metres. In addition to beds, the product range includes wheelchairs, rollators, articles for wound care, orthotics and much more.
"The high quality of Stiegelmeyer products, their competitive prices and our market knowledge are an ideal combination to be successful in Croatia, says Ivan Petković. The timing is perfect, he says, because major investments are currently being made in the hospitals. Similar to Ukraine today, Croatia was supplied with many donated and discarded beds from the rest of Europe during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. These are now being replaced with modern models. Through the work with the used beds, the Stiegelmeyer brand is also already known in some places: "In the Biograd hospital, for example, 30-year-old mechanical Stiegelmeyer beds are currently being sorted out and replaced with new ones," explains Mr Petković.
Karl Dietz had already had Stiegelmeyer on its radar as a possible partner for many years, e.g. through visits to the Medica trade fair in Düsseldorf. Now two hospital bed models in particular are the focus of the cooperation: the Evario one and the Evario, the latter especially in the version with integrated scales. "With these, we can equip semi-ICUs in addition to normal wards," says Mr Petković. Thanks to good business relations with hospital customers, he says, it is easy to arouse interest in the new brand and to switch ongoing projects to Stiegelmeyer beds. At the time of our conversation, 200 beds and 100 bedside cabinets were already in production for Karl-Dietz customers.
Good product quality is crucial for success, and so is good service. That's why Ivan Petković had brought three technicians from his team with him to East Westphalia. At our service centre in Herford, they were thoroughly trained in all technical aspects of our beds so that the hospitals in Croatia can rely on first-class maintenance.
What other good news is there from the sunny dreamland of Croatia? Ivan Petković is proud of the fact that Karl Dietz can also score points in the area of sustainability. The company is located in Knin, far away from urban centres like Zagreb, and is the only comparable supplier of medical products in the rural region.
The 3,400 sqm building complex includes modern offices and storage rooms as well as an exhibition for customers. And the sun feeds the solar cells on the roof for environmentally friendly electricity generation. This point is another thing Karl Dietz and Stiegelmeyer have in common, even if the Herford sun still needs more practice.
