True to one's roots

AFTER giving a presentation titled The Story of Kärcher - The Successful Mittelstand, chief executive officer Hartmut Otto Jenner waited for questions from the floor. The first query was good-natured yet piercing: how are Mittelstand firms supposed to relate to a company as huge as Kärcher?

With more than 12,300 employees across 67 countries, cleaning technology company Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co hardly fits the image conjured up by the German term "Mittelstand", commonly translated as "small and medium enterprise".

Yet a Mittelstand firm is not defined by its size, Mr Jenner tells The Business Times, in an interview following the Singaporean-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce business luncheon where he had shared Kärcher's story.