Turbo for talented athletes

MHP plays in the Champions League, Porsche does anyway. How does this background match a partnership with a football club in the third league?

Ralf Hofmann: It matches perfectly. Tradition meets innovation.

Lutz Meschke: You can also choose a different pair of terms to fit both teams: small but powerful.

You're being very modest. MHP is a leading management consultancy in the automobile industry and has 1,300 employees. And Porsche is breaking all the records: A turnover of 17.2 billion euros last year and a rise in vehicle deliveries by almost 30 per cent this year. In the first half of 2015, you sold 114,000 cars.

Lutz Meschke: Yes, things are going well. And that goes for the Kickers as well. The basic attitude is positive and the environment is stable.

Does the club have growth potential?

Lutz Meschke: We definitely think so. The Stuttgarter Kickers have been doing some excellent work for some time. That applies not least to youth work.

The turbo for talented athletes has a special place in the sports sponsoring programme of Porsche AG.

Lutz Meschke: Youth work is important for us. Not only because sport has a tremendous significance in our society. As a successful company we intend to assume our responsibility for youth very consciously, and this means for young people from all social levels. We run our programmes on a long-term basis and need reliable partners to achieve sustainability.

Viewed from this aspect, is your commitment to the Kickers based on a double strategy?

Lutz Meschke: Exactly. And that is the attraction of this partnership. The joint further development in the youth and professional sector at the Stuttgarter Kickers is a magnificent task for the coming years.

And this also provides MHP with a clear win-win prospect?

Ralf Hofmann: Of course. The declared goal of our commitment to the Stuttgarter Kickers is to raise the level of our awareness. We're in the B2B business, our customers know us – that's not our theme. But we are growing fast and we want to recruit the best graduates.

MHP is a management consultancy...

Ralf Hofmann: ... and has specialised in IT-based process optimisation. In fact in all company processes. We're also talking about logistics, production as well as process chains within corporate sectors such as Development and Administration.

Your special theme is car production, right?

Lutz Meschke: MHP is market leader in the automobile industry.

And Porsche is market leader in premium sports cars. Do the Kickers have to catch up now?

Lutz Meschke: It wouldn't be a bad thing if the team were market leaders in the third league table at the end of the season.

That would be equivalent to promotion to the second league. And then?

Lutz Meschke: Basically it's always good to play in a higher class. But seriously, you can’t plan success with 100% certainty in competitive sport either. And what applies to business also applies to sport in general: if you don't want to trip up, you have to place every step you take carefully. One after the other.