Category: Uncategorized @en

Niclas Fång-The best colleague in the world?

Niclas began as Office Manager at the Kling Group in May and rarely has a recruitment been more successful. We heard about Niclas’s excellence through one of our sales leaders, Nicolas Svensson. They got to know each other in the military service in Gotland 23 years ago. The word on the street was that we needed someone who could do all the work that the rest of us did not want to do. Joking aside, we needed a competent multi-wizard with great care and so far we are extremely happy! For example, only one of about 2000 delivered order had wrong content.

Our meticulous multi-artist Niclas began his career as a technical assistant and has a background as cameraman, project manager and production coordinator. All these experiences and knowledge have been totally useless for us but Niclas still got the overall responsibility for our warehouse, logistics, office, administration and customer service.

Niclas obviously have a life outside work and a number of more or less advanced vices. Besides a bizarre Whiskey-interest, he has laid down a small fortune on his movie collection. When he does not drink some unutterable 36 year old Whiskey while watching a Czech bootleg copy of Evil Dead, he spends a lot of time at his summer house in Bromma. In addition to the aforementioned stuff, he is also a bit of a photogenic prodigy. All pictures taken on Niclas are just spectacular, no matter how peculiar context it is.

This man’s presence, social skills and commitment are undisputed in the very top, which makes him an invaluable colleague. We are extremely happy to have Niclas with us, he makes us confident that everything works and also makes our lives a little more fun!

Finally, in response to the question of Niclas is the world’s best colleague? Yes, yes he is.

November has been a busy month in every way and we systematically follow our plan to become the biggest Brand in the business. To continue to develop, improve and innovate our product collections, we have visited three continents over the last month in search of new, premium suppliers. The aim is to make Kling Cordena the best company in its niche and to prepare for the start of our second company Kling Sortina, in the beginning of 2016.

To visit trade fairs and suppliers means long days filled with incredible encounters with exciting and wonderful people. The response has been fantastic on our frog, the concept and the journey we are on, building our brands. In China, our CEO and owner Fredrik Kling met a man who had brought his own lucky frog in his pocket. Everywhere we have been, people associates the frog with various positive emotions and everyone we encounter are really excited to see it!

In connection with all these scheduled fairs we also took on the task of translating the blog into English. It is somewhat amazing that people in China, Taiwan, the US, Russia, Europe and the Nordic countries are now reading about us and what we do! We are humbled by the fact that we did not even have a company name a year ago.

When you are traveling, it is important to not completely lose your basic routines. Many sales people, who spends a lot of time on the road, recognize the fact that it is common to eat junk food. A healthy diet is obviously a challenge when you do not have access to your usual resources. However, we strive to find time for exercise everywhere. For example In connection with a trip home a few weeks ago (where a certain CEO arrived several hours early) the training that was available was a long walk a few laps around the terminal. Anything is possible with the right mindset!

Fredrik and Sekina are home again and we have taken big steps towards our common goal, They have met and created a number of new contacts that we will work with for a long time to come, which will result in fantastic product releases, both in current and new Kling Companies.

A few weeks ago we decided that all of our male employees would be in the Kling Group Movember Challenge, which internally was received with mixed emotions. In the company there are a few different teams, some of which run a full beard, others are smooth shaved and not a single soul has a mustache. Getting everybody to agree to the challenge proved to be a pretty easy game when we cleverly managed to use “peer pressure” as an incentive.

For those of you who want to know more about the Movember Foundation, here is some information: The initiative on Movember started in Australia in 2003 with about 30 participants. Movember Foundation finances research on men’s health, testicular cancer, prostate cancer, mental illness and physical inactivity. The basic idea is that through growing a mustache we create more awareness of male health risks in its most common forms. 5 million people have participated and contributed since its the start, with a total of approximately 485 million € collected!

We have decided to help this organization to grow a little more, while in the meantime, enjoy the luxury of offering high class pictures of our mustaches (of varying quality). Our approach is as follows: For every new follower of the Kling Group Facebook accrued during November, we donate 20 SEK in our own name. The aim in the end, in addition to raising money for charity, is that we will get more followers in social media. This is because we want as many people as possible to be a part of the journey we are on to become the largest company in our industry! We would also like to invite our customers and suppliers to give them a greater insight into what kind of company we are.

As a help in this campaign, we have created campaign cards that are very similar to our real business cards, but with the campaign printed on the back instead of our usual info. We have created a Movember-page that anyone can donate to during the whole period and we will count up the number of new followers every week and put the corresponding money directly on this page.

At the moment, we have close to 200 new followers on the campaign’s first week, which had generated a contribution of 3820 SEK. Every week we will also post pictures on our over-inflated lips and show how it goes with the culture. Our dream goal is to reach 1000 followers on Facebook before the end of the year, which we can only achieve if this and other posts are shared widely. Thanks in advance!

This Saturday we gathered most of the Kling Group employees for our autumn conference. 3 people were missing who for various reasons could not attend. The happiest reason was of course that a new life was born. So initially we all want to direct our warmest congratulations to Alexander and Helena who made sure that little William came to the world! We even managed to get us a participant through Skype so we were almost full strength when the conference started at 08:00!

After a brilliant introduction by Fredrik Kling, where we presented future subsidiaries, new sales diploma, the status of recruitment and other info (that for various reasons is kept from the public eye). After the intro a number of excellent presentations by our employees followed. We collaborate a lot on the field and try to share as much as possible to each other. Since we have a completely transparent CRM-system everything is available for all colleagues to see, which generates a lot of good tips!

We also took the oportunity to launch a number of new products that complements and strengthen the already fantastic collection, which is now undoubtedly the strongest on the market. For all customers, existing and soon-to-be, you will soon see these articles in a personal presentation! Even our health coach Keva Forsberg was in place physically for the first time since the partnership began. Besides the privilege to be involved in the Kling Group’s most lavish product release ever, he held also a very instructive and inspiring lectures on diet, nutrition and routines that work for everyone. This was rounded off with a highly intense and good work-out that resulted in many of our employers seaming to walk a bit stiffer than usual today!

After the training we went to the hotel for a change of clothes and time for social time. Then everyone gathered up for the evening’s gala dinner on the cozy and noisy restaurant “Hemma hos Kaj” in Hammarby Sjöstad. During dinner we took the opportunity to hand out diplomas and other awards to our best-achieving Sales people. The evening was rounded off in entirely reasonable time because we had many points to graze on Saturday.

When we gathered on Saturday morning, half an hour earlier than planned, it was with a great sense of energy and joy. The reason we started earlier than planned was after requests from the staff who really wanted to have enough time to discuss all the ideas and thoughts that came up during dinner, which points to a tremendous commitment.

The Kling Group has quickly gained a very inspiring community and cohesion which is awesome to see! When we coincidentally contacted Alexander, we heard that they were going to the hospital to have a baby, which resulted in that we quickly gathered us for a Good-luck-to Groupie!

The majority of this half day was spent working with our new products, refining the technology and procedures, and a lot of other useful information. We finished the conference at lunch and also had time for a final group photo before all had to go home to their districts.

Many thanks to all the participants, speakers, winner, employees and friends for the best conference in the Kling Group’s history! Although we have only been running sales in just over six months, this bodes very well for the future!

To develop smart and functional products is something we are passionate about. To give you a little more insight into this work, this week’s post deals in the purchasing process, packaging design, product and construction of collections.

When a new product is born, it is always based on a need. In order to offer the market’s best products, we must of course make some adjustments so that all items meet our tough quality standards. This results in that we can influence the content or function of a hand cream, or add the coriander oil in a product to obtain a moisturizing function.

On our summer conference, we launched a number of products which are all produced in Sweden. We care about nature and try as much as possible to avoid unnecessary environmental burden through long-distance transport. It also means that we can have a very open and close collaboration with our producers so as to have a good and quick dialogue throughout the product development. At this writing, we are planning for the autumn conference. We have 7 new additions to the sales staff who have not met each other yet and we intend to release new and exciting products that complement our already highly potent portfolio!

Simultaneously with this, we also update our existing articles to new versions with a slightly different label and multilingual translation. We have recruited on the majority of the potential districts and starts to really get a foothold in Sweden. Now we suspend the recruiting process for the moment and focus on educating and teach our new sales staff our routines. We wish all new employees a warm welcome!

We are constantly working hard to bring new items to the collection, but also glances at all the ideas and concepts that we want to continue working with within The Kling Group. Many exciting plans are discussed and we are preparing the launch of the next subsidiaries. The warehouse has just been expanded with new shelves to make room for all the new deliveries. We both grow out of our stock and must also clog up so that we can deliver larger quantities when we launch our new additions to Kling Cordena!

We begin to get a clear and consistent theme in our packaging designs, where sketches and model building gives a clear view of the concept which makes it easier to keep a consistent line. When new formats or exciting packaging templates pops up it’s important to keep within the set limits of the graphic profile.

Regarding the inner and outer boxes we now have a set design with three black and three white sides on all the boxes, we can customize. We had red subpages on our packs in the beginning but has now decided to clean up the profile and only keep the colors black and white.

We have achieved new sales records both as a company and at the personal level. We have an incredibly strong cohesion of the enterprise and all colleagues advises, assists and pushes each other to create the best possible circulation. There has been an honest and personal culture based on competition, will, cohesion and commitment, which is fantastic to see. The hard work that our employers has conducted results in the fact that we can concentrate even more on upcoming brands.

We continue to keep our sights set on becoming the largest company in the industry in the Nordic countries and to do that we need to diversify our markets! A big thanks goes out to all our customers. We are incredibly excited about all the wonderful relationships we create with people all over the country!

Since the day we started The Kling Group we had a strong ambition and a clear conviction of where we should be in a few years. It may seem cocky or even crazy but our plan is to be the largest direct selling company in tScandinavia before 2020. Since its inception last spring, we are now 16 people in Sweden, we have a fantastic and well thought out collection (and many more in the pipeline), revenues well above budget and a stock that we will soon outgrow.

This coupled with the amazing response we have received on our hard work through Facebook, website, and above all, this blog makes us confident that we are in exactly the place we want to be today, in a straightforward way to the goal!

To reach this goal, we have in addition to the aforementioned things even figured, fantasized and now concretised developed a completely new and revolutionary concept for the industry: Kling Group Franchise. This proprietary concepts will be of great help in our ambition to grow in a controlled yet faster than if we had to micromanage everything from Stockholm.

In order to launch the brand in a new country, a huge amount of work is required. Translating product labels, website, sales support, complete the franchise agreements, manuals describing how to use the brand are all parts required.

First Kling brand to set foot outside of Sweden is Kling Cordena, who earlier this week started in Norway with the lovely Marte Refvem as Sales Director. Sekina Kling therefore went to our western neighbor country to kick-start sales and to ensure that this newly hatched tadpoles has a good start in life. Sekina sends word that it will be a success in Norway!

We wish our new colleagues and partners the best of luck with the start-up of Cordena in Norway!

We are cooperating with the charity organisation Plan Sweden, who works to give children in affected areas a more tolerable life. Yesterday our employees on Kling Cordena left their normal work routine to volunteer!

Yesterday we gathered in Plan Sweden’s premises for a presentation of the organization and its current projects. In this case, we were to become part of the project “Because I am a girl”, working against child marriage. Plan aims to educate and inform in countries where girls as young as 12 may be married off to the parents needing money for their living.

Plan is a non-profit organization that is totally dependent on grants in order to do their work. Our aim is to give our employees real experiences instead of just putting up a penny to a charity and then have a good conscience. Therefore, we drew on our representative clothes and then went out to collect money in Stockholm City. We had two hours in the town, which resulted in a really nice contribution to the project.

Since we did not have any idea what it meant to stand and rattle with a moneybox, it was a little bit shocking to experience how difficult it is to get people to open their hearts and wallets, despite the enormous abundance that we actually have compared with these children. We did not change the world in a day, but now feel stronger than ever that everyone can always do something for someone!

After lunch, we were referred to the various workstations for administrative work which among other things was to register godchildren and godparents, folding folders and insert papers and mailings. These data are strictly necessary for the organization to operate and Plan have a variety of volunteers who do this in their spare time.

We got a good eye opener how it is to stand and collect money from people. The annoying feeling in your stomach when no one meets one’s gaze, where a greeting does not get any response, where people are too busy to stop and take in your message or where someone just finds you disturbing. However, we are overwhelmed by all the lovely meetings and conversations with kind souls who helped to give these children a little better chance in life. We are incredibly grateful for all contributions and also wants to thank Plan Sweden, which allowed us to take part of their organization in order to help where it matters!

It’s been almost six months since we started the long journey of The Kling Group. A journey that has been incredibly exciting and transformative. We have worked very hard and focused to build our company and brand into what it is today (and what it will be) and would like to write about my feelings and impressions after this first important stage!

Everything started when my wife Sekina and I had an idea and a dream to build a sales company that would start in the simple fact that its main resource is people, both employees, customers, suppliers and partners. It was also what prompted the ambition that The Kling Group would involve and activate itself in charity. We are proud that our first partner in this area is the organization Plan Sweden, which has as main objectives to help disadvantaged children. We will work with Plan Sweden in both the short and long term, with the starting point of our upcoming summer conference.

The actual selling towards customers started in early March with an intimate kickoff with all new sales representatives and other personnel. In the first period, I myself had the role of buyer, customer service manager, logistics manager, warehouse worker, CFO and also, of course, sales. We sold on daytime and shipped the products in the evenings, which meant that we longed for both our real office and our warehouse manager. The products were stacked as best we could in our garage, which soon became very crowded.

Invoicing was from our kitchen table and every morning on my way to school me and my children did a routine of kissing the bills before we put them in the mailbox. We chose from the start to involve our 2 children in the company as we quickly understood that this will not be a regular job, this is a lifestyle. The children thus have been invaluable in helping to pack products, making mind maps, to come up with proposed name of the company and put the stamps on all outgoing mail. Our daughter Linnea says that she will become the CEO of the company when she grows up (Our son Lukas will still become a professional football player).

After more than two months we could finally move into our real space which became an absolute necessity when sales took off! Having our warehouse in connection with the office is a huge benefit when we work so closely with our products. We are very pleased with our new facilities with just that positive energy that is so necessary for the well-being of a company. Nothing is for free of course and there are a number of people who deserve our appreciation. We are incredibly grateful to Henrik and Niclas who work in the office and all they do for the company and us. Many thanks also to all of the fantastic sales staff who is working hard to build upTthe Kling Group brand. We also want to thank all the vendors who have believed in us and supported us and all others who in various ways have been there for us.

When analyzing the figures from our first six months, the result is far above the budget we put up at the start. We are entering summer with great success and can now enter August to begin enforcing Phase 2 of the construction of the Kling Group. Have a great summer! Fredrik Kling

The curiosity regarding our products is big and therefor we here offer a small sample of the product range. For you to get a feel for our current collection and our ambition we set up a tasty smorgasbord of items in our makeshift photo studio. We have a whole bunch of awesome news that we will shortly release.

We have also begun to redo all the artwork and labels to adjust the collection to the international market. This means that all products, bottles, packaging and labels get an English-language front and table of contents, etc. will be translated into various languages. We do this to make the transition work smoothly when we launch The Kling Group and its subsidiaries abroad. All the products will in future be supplied with this new format, of course it’s the same great content and function of the articles as before.

Business development and product work has taken a whole new level because we are at this moment is developing a new incredibly exciting business model that will facilitate the launch abroad. A completely new concept, a new business method and a unique approach that will accelerate our rate of expansion significantly. We, of course, won’t say anything more than that in this stage. Although this blog is very transparent, it is more fun to release the info a bit intermittent!

We are very cocky and pleased with the look and feel of the collection so far and get absolutely overwhelming response from our lovely customers, suppliers, industry peers and our own sales staff. When a company is in the forefront you get eyes on you, we believe it is time to show what we can do!

In a short period of time we have managed to get an extensive customer base with a wide spread both geographically and in different business areas. However, this is no coincidence, since our products are versatile and smart and suitable for most conceivable working situations.

We exclusively use our own products in the daily business routine. There simply are no better alternatives for the purposes which they are created for. It is also much easier to find opportunities for improvement and product updates when you use them every day. This of course benefits both us and our customers!

For example, we have a wonderfully smart and mobile whiteboard solution that we call Whyboard. The name can perhaps be perceived a bit too clever but explains exactly what it is about. Why should you dedicate an entire wall to a large, heavy, difficult-mounted board when you just as well could have a feather-light sheet with the exact same functionality, but with a flexibility that surpasses everything.

We ourselves have completely rejected the ambitions of using traditional WB solutions and are exclusively using our own product for everything. Since this was one of the first products we sourced, it has been with us throughout the journey and have in its own way laid the foundation for what The Kling Group is today.