Innovation and Performance Drivers of Business Clusters by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030799076
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

7.2 Glass Industry and the Manufacture of Bijouterie

(Lasvit, Internal materials, 2018) North Bohemia—GLASSWORKS/GLASS INDUSTRY has always belonged here. As the glassmaker Martin Šikola said in a document by Leon Jakimič from Lasvit company: ‘There was nothing else to do here…’ Historically, it was about family ties, the coexistence of Germans and Czechs, the transfer of crafts from generation to generation, but then World War II and regime change came, instead of family glassworks, factory halls appeared. After the revolution in 1989, a huge enthusiasm, which was replaced by disappointment and crisis. Surprisingly, in the 2020s, we can say that tradition has survived it all. It is inscribed in the blood of the people of the region.

Glassmaking is a traditional industry that has become a significant phenomenon for the development of the Czech economy, especially in North Bohemia. It is an industry with extensive know-how and specific technologies created over many generations. Since about the seventeenth century, it has been a pro-export-oriented industry influenced by tough foreign competition, the prices of imported commodities due to changes in exchange rates, tariff barriers, and other external influences. Looking back through history, the industry is accustomed to going through alternating periods of booms with severe recessions.

Let us focus, for example, on the eighteenth century. The first half is associated with the boom and significant development of the glass industry. Glass production was dispersed in small ‘handicraft companies’ associated with the economy of large estates. These glassworks were dependent on the supply of wood as a raw material for heating furnaces, until the middle of the eighteenth century. Around the end of the eighteenth century, glassmakers faced a crisis caused by the distance of production from sales, competition from England, and the inability to adapt to demand for new products. Further stagnation of the glass industry occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century due to the Napoleonic Wars and the continental blockade.

The way out of this crisis was to use the stimuli of the industrial revolution, which enabled the transition from piece production to serial consumer production from manufactories. Despite the fact that this industry is accustomed to crises (see Nový, 2013), it was significantly shaken by the closure of several glass companies in the first decade of the twenty-first century. At the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, glass companies occupied the third most important place in the manufacturing industry in Liberec in terms of employment. At the end of 2003, however, the first signs of the commencing problems in the glass industry were already recorded. These gradually deepened, and at the beginning of 2006, it was possible to characterise the situation as a crisis, and the global economic crisis only completed it. It can be assumed that this was due to insufficient innovation activities. This caused a decline in competitiveness, especially vis-à-vis Southeast Asian producers. The average number of employees in the Czech glass industry fell by 61% in 2009 compared to 1991 (from approximately 42,000 to 16,000 employees).

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