This "Vitamin A" is not an ingredient added to beer made in Bulgaria, but a key part of doing business in this people-oriented sector. The "A" stands for attention, and a lot is needed in order to be successful in beer sales.

This is one of the business philosophies followed by Jan Derck van Karnebeek, the newly appointed general manager of Zagorka Bulgaria, one of the three largest breweries in this country. Zagorka is 50 per cent owned by the Dutch beer giant Heineken, with the other half held by Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company. 

Van Karnebeek was appointed to head the company in late 2005, replacing Dimitar Alexiev, who had been a very successful top manager of Zagorka for more than 10 years. And this young, ambitious and, it appears, very experienced Dutch guy is resolved to show that he could do even better. His recipe - a lot of attention.

"In Bulgaria, there is something like 70 000 places where beer is sold. Here you have a small store in every block of flats, selling the same stuff. The moment of truth for the consumer is when they walk into the store and see the nice refrigerator of Zagorka. The product should be there - cold and fresh, and most of all nicely presented," van Karnebeek says.

To check if the needed attention is paid to every shop keeper and to every beer-thirsty customer, van Karnebeek often goes himself on a trip to even the remotest corner of Bulgaria and delivers his dosage of the beer trade's Vitamin A.

"For me it is not only to check the sales places, but also to show interest in the work of all those shop keepers selling our product. Paying attention to people and being there, showing that their work is important makes them do a better job," he says.

Van Karnebeek says he is a man for challenges; he finds the biggest challenge in Bulgaria the fact that things change and develop very quickly.

"So, the big challenge is to make sure that you react quickly to all the changes in the market and in the environment, which also makes it fun. In Zagorka, we are a company with more than 500 employees, selling into every little village in Bulgaria. In a sense, we are like a very big ship that sails to many small islands," he says.

The quick reaction, in his view, is to have the ability to respond to competitors' decisions to increase or decrease prices and to respond also to new legislation coming into force and affecting the industry. Both things exist in Bulgaria - the competition in face of other world giants like InBev (owner of Kamenitsa) and Carlsberg, both with Bulgarian arms.

"If I compare the situation here to other markets where I have worked, this is a very dynamic environment," van Karnebeek says.

His career has led through other very exciting spots, like his homeland the Netherlands, where beer is part of the local culture, or Slovakia, which has a tradition of making fine beer. But, the biggest challenge for him was the time spent in China - "a huge country, with huge market potential and a lot of extremities".

"I have been lucky to always have interesting jobs. And certainly China was interesting because..., well, it was exotic to say the least. I was living in Hong Kong and working all over China," he says.

They only sold Heineken, and that to the top of the market, to people with high incomes. Several things about Chinese amaze him. The key one is that there is a very big difference in China between the people on the top and the commoners from the streets. The difference is not only in the extreme gap in incomes, but also in the attention those groups pay to different aspects of life.

"Chinese people are very talented, very clever. They are full of initiative. So, in China something is always happening. The Chinese way is about making money and becoming successful," van Karnebeek says.

Another challenge he finds being with Heineken is to compare the markets of China and Bulgaria.

"In China (there was) a very big market and (we had) only a small share of it. Now that I am in Bulgaria, here we have a small market but a considerably big share. In Bulgaria, we are selling to every Bulgarian and have beer for every Bulgarian, in terms of price and taste, and this is what makes my current experience exciting, too," he says.

One could think that van Karnebeek's career at Heineken is a lot of fun and excitement, and it is, the guy would say. However, it has its difficult moments, too, and its times when a person needs to be focused and inventive. This, according to van Karnebeek applies to both the product and the management sphere.

"The most difficult single moment was when I was appointed to bring to the market something called `Beer Tender'. At that moment it looked like a hopeless project. Now it is on the market and the one thing I learned is that even if something looks difficult, just go and do it," he says.

Heineken first offered its Beer Tender draught home-beer system in 2004. The system consists of an appliance and a keg that are compact and very easy to use. The Beer Tender is designed to keep a compact four-litre keg at the right temperature and in optimal condition for a period of three weeks after the first beer has been drawn.

The system is the first in its kind that allows people to draw and enjoy a perfect glass of fresh beer whenever they want in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.

Another difficult thing in any manager's career, van Karnebeek believes, is finding the proper balance.

"Management is, on one side, giving people the freedom to take responsibility, and on the other, making sure that they have a sense of discipline when asked to achieve results. If you want only discipline and no freedom, you get no initiative and nothing happens. If you have only freedom and no discipline things are even worse. Finding the balance is the trick," he says.

Naturally, freedom and discipline are not the only principles in van Karnebeek's Heineken career. He also believes in the responsible behaviour of his company and, by no coincidence, his office in the outskirts of Sofia is filled with copies of Heineken's Code of Business Conduct.

The code has many sides. It governs all of Heineken's actions as a company: how they treat their employees, how they deal with the customers, suppliers and with the government.

"The basic principle is that Heineken and, therefore, Zagorka does all its business within the legal framework of any country it operates in," says Karnebeek.

The Code of Business Conduct also has an alcohol policy, a use of water policy and many others.

"We have very clear rules where and when it is not appropriate to have beer or advertise beer. Even if there is no law on it in a respective country, we will make sure that our advertising in no way combines things that cannot be combined with beer. Like driving, for example," he says.

In the time he has already spent in Bulgaria, van Karnebeek has found out that this country has a unique culture of consumption, which to a certain extent also serves the purposes of the beer business. Bulgarians are not strictly oriented towards certain types of beverage - like the Germans and Dutch, who mostly prefer beer, or the French, who lean toward wine. The people of this country like beer, wine and spirits and are open to experimenting with different types of beverage.

When it comes to beer, however, Bulgarians are blessed with the chance to have three major beer companies - Heineken, InBev and Carlsberg - competing on the local market, which leads to good quality and better price. In fact, according to van Karnebeek, Bulgaria offers the cheapest beer in all Europe.

This sounds a bit odd, but, provided that in communist times, which are not so distant yet, good beer was hard to find in any shop, and even Zagorka was then bought using personal connections to either the brewery (situated in the southern Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora) or to the state-owned beer distributing companies. This was at a time when competition was a strange-sounding term and Zagorka was the best of the local beer industry.

"I think that today Zagorka is still seen to be the best Bulgarian beer. So, we are still in a good position. Competition is everywhere in the world. For me it is not the challenge. It is just part of the job," van Karnebeek says.

Zagorka offers three main brands to the market, and, according to van Karnebeek, they cover the demand of different target groups. There is the most-popular brand Zagorka, the best seller for the company. There is also Ariana, with a lower price for the respective income group. And, of course, there is the Heineken "for the top of the market".

Asked whether Bulgarian beer is preferred by the sometimes-quite-nihilistic-towards-their-country's-products Bulgarians, van Karnebeek responds positively and says this is not some kind of a phenomenon. He goes further by saying that Bulgarian beer will continue to dominate the local market, despite the different views of the many customers.

"If you ask somebody: `Do you want to buy a Bulgarian car?' (and such does not exist), the popular answer would be: `No, I would rather buy a German one.' But, with beer and with wine it is a little bit different. People are proud of their culture and are very much locally oriented," he says.

In his view, beer always and in every market has a very strong local culture. This is true in Bulgaria, but also in China, in South America and many other countries, he says.

He is also among the ones who believe in the export potential of Bulgarian beer and explains this belief with a very interesting philosophy.

"Why do I believe in the export potential of Bulgarian beer? Well, because first of all there are more than a million Bulgarians outside Bulgaria. These people, the further they are from Bulgaria, the more willing they are to have Bulgarian beer on their table," he says, giving one of his explanations.

The other one sounds even more appealing.

"Besides people, Bulgarians are also starting to successfully export restaurants, culture and other valuable things. And if you are in New York in a Bulgarian restaurant, and such restaurants exist, it is better to have a Bulgarian beer. Who would like to have Bulgarian food with Budweiser? No, they want Bulgarian beer," van Karnebeek says.

Being a father of four children, van Karnebeek has quite a busy schedule every day. Obviously, this does not break his explorer spirit and does not pose an obstacle for him to be a successful manager on the job.

"My days go in meeting a lot of people. While at the office I meet them to discuss different aspects of the business. When I get home, I am meeting a lot of people again, but the discussions are rather different. In fact, sometimes I think that I am coming to the office to relax," he says with a smile.

Van Karnebeek combines the role of manager and father by drawing energy from what he calls "different sources". In this respect, he believes that the office empowers him to act as father at home, while his populated house provides him with the energy to act in business. To this energy exchange, he adds some walks in the mountains during the weekends and the harmony is just about complete.

"On the job, I can be impatient sometimes, especially if people do not understand me quickly. It is dangerous if you are a manager in another culture. If the culture is different and the language is different, you have to realise that sometimes it will take longer before people start understanding each other," van Karnebeek says when asked about having bad habits.

Regardless of all the high-pressure points in his stay in Bulgaria, however, he enjoys this country and every moment he spends in it.

"I like the ease with which people accept you here. It is an open culture, which is very nice," says van Karnebeek.

And this is not just a compliment, he says, because Bulgaria is the seventh country where he has lived in for a long period of time.