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Adam Walach, Mariusz Walach and Valdemar Walach are named Entrepreneurs of the Year 2010 in the Czech Republic

The brothers Adam, Mariusz and Valdemar Walach from the company WALMARK have won the prestigious title of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 in the Czech Republic.

They were presented with the trophy this evening in Prague’s Žofín Palace by Karel Schwarzenberg, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the CR, and Magdalena Souček, Country Managing Partner at Ernst & Young in the Czech Republic, which has been organising the contest in the Czech Republic since 2000. The title of Technology Entrepreneur of the Year was awarded to Václav Muchna of Y Soft Corporation. For the seventh year running an award was presented for the Czech Republic’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2010, which this year went to Pavel Křížek of the civic association Ochrana fauny České republiky [Protection of the Fauna of the Czech Republic].

“Success in business is not to be taken for granted - as well as good ideas and hard work there has to be a willingness to take great risks and not be afraid of responsibilities. The Czech Republic is still not used to public declarations of success and so not enough is heard of decent, hard-working entrepreneurs. We hope that our competition will help change this situation in the future. It genuinely deserves support and recognition,” says Magdalena Soucek, Country Managing Partner at Ernst & Young in the Czech Republic.

Profile of the winners
Adam, Valdemar and Mariusz Walach, WALMARK
For the Walach brothers it was inconceivable not to begin business activities after the revolution. “We knew that we had the opportunity for the first time in this country to do something independently in the way we wanted. We were fired up and didn’t waste time worrying that things would end badly. We simply said to ourselves that in the worst-case scenario we would start again. We felt our strength lay in the fact that there were three of us.”

The brothers created WALMARK with the aim of doing business with computers. However, with the opening up of markets they discovered that the sky was the limit as far as trading was concerned. Nevertheless, they had never wanted simply to shunt merchandise from place to place. Their aim had always been to supply added value, and so they built their own production plants in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Under the umbrella of WALMARK they created
a drinks division (the Relax brand), a pharmaceuticals division (which produces and sells mainly food supplements and drugs) and an agricultural products division. However, the main driver was the vision of becoming the largest company in the sphere of food supplements in Central and Eastern Europe, which is why they decided to concentrate on the pharmaceuticals division. They sold the drinks division, downsized the agricultural division, and focused all their activities and resources on strengthening the pharmaceutical division and making further investments in the production of nutritional supplements and medicines. From Martians to Proenzi – the portfolio of their products now numbers 300 different items. These days WALMARK has subsidiaries in eight European countries and exports to more than thirty other countries. The entire group reports annual turnover of EUR 100 million.


The other finalists in the competition Entrepreneur of the Year were as follows:
Martin Hrdlička, Hrdlička
Miroslav Jakubec, SERVIS CLIMAX
Karel Majzlík, ELFE
Petr Pejchal, PKS HOLDING
Vladimír Vyhlídal, Pars Komponenty

The prize for Technology Entrepreneur of the Year was awarded to Václav Muchna of Y Soft Corporation, a.s., a company which focuses on research, development, production and sales of the YSoft SafeQ solution, which makes big cost savings and increases the comfort of print jobs.

This year was the seventh time a prize was awarded for Social Entrepreneur of the Year. The prize went to Pavel Křížek of the civic association Ochrana fauny České republiky, whose mission is to protect wild species along with their biotopes and to educate the general public in matters ecological.

The prize for “Best Entrepreneurial Story”, awarded by readers of MF DNES and iDNES.cz, who vote for the entrepreneur with the best and most interesting story to tell, was awarded to Jindřich Fikar of Čokoládovny Fikar. The company is involved mainly in the production of hollow figures and other special chocolate promotional products.

The competition Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 was open to any company owner or manager with at least a 25% ownership interest. Competitors must be responsible for the operations of their companies and be active members of the top management. The company must have been in existence for at least 2 years.

The competition is organised by the newspapers MF Dnes and iDNES.cz. Raiffeisenbank and Glisco are competition partners. The competition is supported by the CzechInvest agency, the association TUESDAY Business Network, the Czech Venture Capital Association, and the US Business School Prague. EURO and Český rozhlas Radiožurnál are its media partners.