Why Orana Dynamics will produce in Latvia as well?

Orana Dynamics is a Belgian company at heart. With its ONLY production facility in Belgium. But changes are about to be put in place. Without putting people jobless.

Orana Dynamics produces everything what is custom cycling and skating wear in our shared facilities in Belgium. We work with 18 people of who some have experience in the business for over 38 years, and who help us on a day to day basis to serve our international clients. In Europe, in Russia, in the United Arab Emirates. Nothing will change here. We will keep our basis in Belgium. Read further what will change then.

As most of you know, I live full time in Riga, Latvia since Autumn 2010. 'A strange place to move to', everyone said, when I told them about the change I was about to make in my life. There are numerous reasons why I felt it could be a smart move.

Having visited Latvia for the 1st time in spring and summer in 2010 with my best friend, I immediately fell in love with this country. Well, the sun was shining. Everyone was happy. Great places to hang
out with a glass of wine till late at night.

There are numerous reasons why Latvia is a great place to live, but not for everyone. When the USSR fell apart in 1990 the big industries moved to Russia and made many people jobless. When winter comes and temperatures hit -30 degrees Celcius, it gets pretty tough for the people here. My entrepreneurial mind was always thinking what I could do, so that the locals could benefit and get a better life, while helping the Orana Dynamics business. We could improve export, working closely with the several ports that Riga counts. A great place, well connected. I wanted to make the city a better place to live in for the locals.

During the course of 2010 and 2011, I got to know people from the beautiful country of Latvia and I understood there is a serious need for businesses to establish here and offer the locals a good job. Many locals love their country, but because there are not enough jobs to cover for everyone, the percentage of skilled people without a job is high, resulting in many to move abroad. Bad for the economy, bad for the relationships within families, bad for everything..

The business climate in Belgium, which is created by our miserable government, is not of that kind that I am keen on launching there a 2nd facility. I do love my home country, but for business activities, it is getting less and less atractive. Honestly, I do not understand how our politicians look at business?

Instead, with 3 big new contracts which we signed late 2011 and early 2012, I decided we should look at options to work in Latvia, because our production capacity in Belgium is used for 100%.
Do not get mistaken. We are NOT setting up production facilities to pay African salaries to our new local workers. We will be paying salaries which match the worker's experience, age and depending on to what extend they can help the Orana Dynamics business. I believe it's a pretty fair decision. I especially did not write about degree as I, for one, do not have a master or bachelor degree, and I believe that it is the people's willingness-to-work which will decide on whether they'll be part of our great team. I want to see the same drive in the people that work in my team, as the one I have brought in the past, and still bring to the company every day.

Over the past months, I have been meeting with people who have fantastic projects in the textile industry here already and we will jump on board and build out the project. One non-local business-owner told me how business went down over the years, with competition from Northern Africa and Asia in particular. He felt very bad about maybe having to lay-off workers who have been loyal to him for many years. I slept VERY BAD that night. I was thinking we HAVE TO to do something. It is in our power, so there are no excuses. I can say I am now pretty excited to give both young and old as many possible jobs as we can here in Riga, Latvia. We will employ -solely- local people. It will hopefully contribute to Latvia's economic growth and be good for everyone. We cannot create thousands of jobs, but we believe we should do our utmost to help Latvia to re-vive!

Latvia is already known for delivering high quality textile to -mainly- Western European countries. The highest quality, the latest technologies, with lower basic costs such as production facility rent, electricity and company tax, will make it for us and for our partners, the new base from where will be producing Private Label apparel for brands which are active worldwide. We are happy that they trust in us and our partners, and understand our social project.

You got it right, we will not be laying off people elsewhere, but continue generating more jobs! We would like to thank -once again- all those numerous clients who have continued showing trust in me and in what I do, over the course of so many years.

Our actions have not remained unnoticed by Governmental bodies and the Royal Embassy of Belgium in Latvia. I do regularly meet with them and I am very thankful to them for supporting us along the way.

As we wrote in one of our past ads: The.Next.Best.Thing, we have in our hands as we will be creating even better products, while working on social projects to make life better for people around us.

Thank you all -so much- again, from the bottom of my heart. By working with Orana Dynamics, you help creating jobs within EUROPE. It has never been more important than now, to work on that area.

Kevin Van Lancker
Founder & Owner at Orana Dynamics Group