Simona Kijonková, the founder of Zásilkovna, sees a new hole in the market

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It’s only been a few weeks since the sale of Zásilkovna was finally closed, on which husband and wife Simona and Jaromír Kijonk earned over four billion crowns. It is one of the biggest Czech business stories of the last 35 years. But the founder of Zásilkovna and a native of Karlovy Vary Rybáry already has a lot of plans for what to do next. How else. “Now I have even more energy. So far we have built one company from scratch, but now we are back on the starting line and can build several companies from scratch at the same time. And that is an incredible driving force and an amazing impulse for me. Where is the horizon? Where to get to? This is infinite, we are only limited by our measured life,” asserts the Iron Lady of Czech business.

The Scott Weber coworking offices in Prague’s Libni are like a maze. A casual passer-by would expect lone entrepreneurs with laptops in the open space. But after a few turns, a large separate office opens, in which sits a lady in a beige suit, one of the few Czech billionaires. In recent weeks, she traveled the world with her husband and companion Jaromír. Aruba, Brazil, Easter Island… And he also has plans for America. But her life does not end with travel. Those who know her expect more “great things”. Simona Kijonková talked about her projects in an interview for e15.

During her trip around the world, she took a short break and is checking the launch of a new family office in Prague. Outside the windows of her office, heavy machinery is demolishing the Libeňský most, and in the distance a whole new neighborhood is growing on Rohanský ostrov. “The view is amazing. We are looking at how a whole new part of the city is being created,” says Kijonková. She is also starting a whole new big project right now.

The philosophy of active investing

The family office wants to invest primarily in the development of the Alensa e-shop, which was founded by Kijonková’s husband Jaromír and which has developed into one of the European leaders in internet sales. “Our family has been involved in optics for a long time. Jaromír recently founded several brick-and-mortar opticians focused on ophthalmology, contact lenses, prescription and sunglasses. We want to continue to develop this field and we are also planning further investments in healthcare and technology, which we understand,” explains Kijonková enthusiastically. Alensa could continue to develop through acquisitions thanks to the capital obtained from the sale of Packeta, the parent company of Zásilkovna, the CVC Capital Partners consortium and billionaire Jiří Šmejc’s Emma Capital with the capital support of R2G, the trio of billionaires Pavel Baudiš, Eduard Kučera and Oldřich Šlemr.

Sama Kijonková will take the lead of the family investment vehicle, on the setting of which she cooperates with experts from Deloitte, lawyers from Havel & Partners and experts from the Emun property management and investment office. The Kijonk family office also has its own team of about ten people, including other lawyers and tax advisors. “We are still looking for some team members, for example investment managers and operatives for investment projects,” advertises the investor.

She set clear limits with her husband. They don’t want to invest in areas they don’t understand, don’t trust, or that conflict with their values. So not a single crown from the Kijonks’ family office will go to gambling, for example. They want to look primarily at medium-sized companies with annual sales of approximately 400 million crowns. These will be companies that, for example, have problems with expansion, management, crediting or where the partners cannot agree on the further development of the company.

“We definitely want to be active investors. We have had great results, acquisitions, transformations and restructurings,” describes Kijonková and mentions a company built in the nineties as an example of her investment appetite. The first generation of post-revolutionary entrepreneurs is already retiring and looking for a successor. If it is not their descendants, they will have no choice but to sell their business. “I still have enough energy, so I’m ready to buy 100 percent shares of those companies. And then run the business. That’s something we’re really looking forward to,” he says. Some takeover offers have even started to fall into the Kijonk’s e-mail inbox.

Business with disgruntled “loners”

But the Kijonks do not only count on the development of existing projects, including Alensa, or on investments in established companies or capital funds. They also want to build new companies themselves. It may sound surprising from an entrepreneur who has devoted the last few years to a technology company dealing with logistics, but she sees the so-called singles, younger people living without a family, as her future big business.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and it’s also due to the fact that I worked very intensively with colleagues at Packet, some of whom are single. I have friends who are single, and I also have several such family members,” Kijonková describes, saying that thanks to this she knows what they complain about and what doesn’t suit them in today’s world. “This world is still not ready for singles. When you consider travel, housing and more or less all aspects of life, it’s quite financially demanding for singles and it’s also a burden on mental health,” reflects the businesswoman. According to her experience, young people are already moving away from big cities because they cannot afford to live there, and are looking for housing in the surrounding area. “But that’s not good news at all. As a result, society becomes poorer and unemployment increases, because there are not so many well-paid job opportunities outside the big cities,” says Kijonková.

But where is the business in this? According to Kijonková, it is similar to when she started the Post Office. It solved a problem that its founder encountered with clients at the time when she was building e-shops for companies. And that problem concerned the trouble-free and fast delivery of goods from these e-shops. “Even in the case of singles, I’ll be solving someone’s problem, and I expect it to turn into a pretty interesting business. And I quite believe it,” he claims. Just as Zásilkovna connected e-shops with brick-and-mortar stores and their customers, Simona Kijonková’s new project wants to connect singles with companies that cannot reach them with their services today.

Kijonková wants to project the focus on singles into the new foundation, with the help of which she wants to support not only a better quality of life for people living alone, but also, for example, single parents or the education of disadvantaged children in problematic regions. In addition, it also counts on money for local non-profit projects that already have experience with similar support. At the beginning, they will invest 30 million crowns in the foundation, the money will gradually increase. “It won’t just be a foundation that distributes money. The foundation can also evaluate the investments itself, which is my rather radical idea. The point is that the funds don’t just sit somewhere waiting to be used, but can be valued through investments in the meantime,” considers Kijonková.

Courtship with Křetínský

Of course, he follows the current events at Zásilkovna, where the new owners have changed the management. She also recorded the words of Daniel Křetínský, whose Energy and Industry Holding, which is also the owner of Czech News Center publishing e15, expressed interest in Zásilkovna last year. Even before Christmas, Křetínský explained to the students of the Prague grammar school Nový PORG during a lecture why he offered less for Zásilkovna than the CVC, Emma Capital and R2G consortium. According to him, Zásilkovna was sold for a value that dramatically exceeded the amount of assets needed to build a completely new company. “But really dramatically. So you have to ask yourself thirty times whether the company’s position on the market is so strong that it will protect you against the arrival of a new competitor who will buy the same assets for perhaps a fifth of the value and start competing hard with you,” emphasized the second richest Czech.

Simona Kijonková gets visibly upset when she remembers Křetínský’s remark, although she tries to remain calm. “Daniel Křetínský and his investment group were one of the many who looked at that investment. If someone feels the need to comment publicly, fine, that’s their business. After a fight, everyone is a general. Especially when he’s commenting from the outside, he didn’t live in that company and didn’t build it,” he says a bit dismissively. But he uses facts to support his arguments: “It is always the case that someone is willing to sell at a certain price and someone is willing to buy at a certain price. And apparently there was a group here that was willing to buy it at such a price.” She herself is, in any case, convinced that there is no room for building a “second Post Office” in the Czech Republic today. After a while, he comes back to it: “But I’m really looking forward to making a joint investment with Daniel Křetínský one day.”