Pavel Šatný: how a manager bought his Czech factory from US owners

Five years ago, Pavel Šatný and two colleagues bought out the factory he had previously simply managed as an employee for its American owners. Now their company Doornite — the largest Czech door manufacturer — is going public on Prague's Start exchange, aiming to raise around 80 million crowns from investors for a 20% stake, valuing the whole business at 400 million crowns.

Šatný's story began in 2015, when the graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT) joined the Czech division of the American group Masonite as country director for Czechia. The company was loss-making at the time — which is exactly why the Americans were changing its leadership. Šatný delivered: in 2018, the business turned a profit for the first time in six years. A year later it bought the Topdoors plant in Věsky and expanded its range with door frames, which often sell for more than the doors themselves.

The trouble was that Masonite itself was struggling in Europe: the group was winding down operations in Israel, Turkey, Romania, Hungary and Poland, and eventually sold its loss-making French unit for a symbolic one euro. The small Czech plant held little interest for the Americans, but as a public company they didn't want to damage their reputation — so they offered to sell the business to its own management.

In 2020, a vice-president of the American corporation called Šatný with two pieces of news: the company had been decided to be sold off in Czechia, and specifically to him. He had one day to think it over, after which he brought the finance and commercial directors — Lubomír Bžoušek and David Krubner — into the deal. The deal itself took 11 months to close.

Šatný found the money for the buyout not through wealth-management funds for rich families but thanks to an old dormitory friend, Lumír Fülsack, with whom he still plays golf and sails. Through his firm Ecoplanet, Fülsack invested around 30 million crowns for a 40% stake and helped secure bank guarantees. If the IPO forecasts hold up, Fülsack's investment will roughly triple over five years. Šatný himself controls 36% and a majority of the votes, while each of his two partners holds 12%.

In June 2021 the company returned to Czech control, changing its name from Masonite to Doornite — under the terms of the deal, it had a year to drop the American IT system and rebrand. Today Doornite operates at two sites — in Jihlava and in Věsky near Uherské Hradiště — employing more than 200 people. Last year the company's revenue reached almost 600 million crowns with EBITDA of around 50 million, and this year management expects revenue of 650 million crowns and margins of around 9%.

Proceeds from the listing are earmarked for launching new production lines and buying up smaller competitors — the company intends to grow not just organically but also through market consolidation.