Victorinox is a family business established in 1884 and based in Ibach (Schwyz) in the heart of Switzerland. Besides the legendary «Original Swiss Army Knife», Victorinox produces and sells various pocket knives, as well as household and professional knives. In addition, Victorinox has four further segments: Timepieces, Travel Gear, Fashion and Fragrances. Victorinox employs more than 1,800 personnel worldwide and achieves a turnover of approximately CHF 500 million.
In the field of business-to-business, Victorinox is also active in the manufacture and marketing of advertising material. The knives account for approximately fourfifths of the business. Victorinox decided to carry out credit checks on its advertising material customers as a number of sectors turned out to be problematic. «We check all of our new customers by means of Dun & Bradstreet,» explains Hans-Rudolf Steiner, Advertising Material Sales Manager at Victorinox, «and in case of a late payment, we also check the credit rating of our regular customers» With approximately ten per cent of its customers, the advertising material department of Victorinox decides on delivery upon advance payment. This way it prevents late payment or even payment default.
A number of our customers are companies, which procure the advertising material directly from Victorinox, including many trade firms and handicraft businesses with small order quantities. However, according to Hans-Rudolf Steiner, it is the traders who generate more turnover: «In part we deal with huge invoices due to the large volumes. The advertising material sector though, has little equity and is not very liquid. Therefore we take a particularly close look here.»
In addition to Dun & Bradstreet, Victorinox took advantage of Dun & Bradstreet’s further training pr gramme. Dun & Bradstreet customers can participate in the various further training courses free of charge in order to deepen their knowledge of credit management. Hans-Rudolf Steiner: «We took part in the seminar on credit rating checks. For us this was a great supplement in order to utilise the Dun & Bradstreet company reports even better.»