Treat a cus­tomer as if they were a friend or a family member, says father figure of Oilon, Ossi Leiwo. As the emo­tional rela­tion­ship deepens, it is dif­fi­cult for a com­pet­itor to break through.

A good busi­ness story should always start in a garage in the suburbs. Oilon was founded in 1961 when Urho Lehto and Jorma Manssila, both from Hel­sinki, noticed a gap in the heavy fuel oil burner market. Their first office was in a garage in Maunula, Hel­sinki.

Ossi Leiwo soon joined them as a funder and tech­nical expert. The company moved to the city of Lahti where the Board and product devel­op­ment depart­ment can still be found.

Ossi is known as the father figure of Oilon. He ran the family busi­ness for 35 years and retired in 2009. The 87-​year-old Ossi still closely follows Oilon’s busi­ness oper­a­tions.

But let’s go back to the 60s for a moment:

“In those days, yards in Lahti were full of piles of fire­wood. Slowly the fire­wood dis­ap­peared as oil replaced wood as a form of heating.”, Ossi remem­bers.

Oilon took a firm hold of this devel­op­ment. First, Oilon impor­ted burners to Finland from Denmark, amongst other places. However, they didn’t work suf­fi­ciently well, so Ossi wanted to start to produce the burners himself. The company CEO, Urho Lehto took care of mar­ket­ing.

“We were a great double act. My job was to run the company and make sure that the equip­ment worked. Urho was the gifted showman.” Ossi says.

Soon Oilon started to sell light oil burners, which quickly became the engine of growth.

“At first, we tried import­ing them. Same thing: they didn’t work, so we started to produce them ourselves. Neces­sity is the mother of inven­tion.” Ossi says.

The cus­tomer is your friend

The first oil burners we expor­ted to the Soviet Union in 1965. Next came Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany. Ossi didn’t let success get to him, however. He real­ised early on that the oil era wouldn’t last forever. Oil burners were soon joined by gas burners and later heat pumps.

“I became inter­ested in heat pumps already during the oil crisis when the price of oil went sky high. This was in 1979.

We’ve come a long way from the garage. Many things have changed along the way, but respect for the cus­tomer has remained.

“A good cus­tomer rela­tion­ship is remin­is­cent of a friend­ship or even family. Trust is the basis for everything, just like buying a used car. When trust and an emo­tional rela­tion­ship are estab­lished, it is incred­ibly dif­fi­cult for a com­pet­itor to break through that.

Climate emis­sion reduc­tion object­ives guar­an­tee the demand for clean energy tech­no­logy. Oilon is clearly part of the solu­tion: its burners and heat pumps reduce carbon dioxide emis­sions by mil­lions of tonnes every year.

When Oilon was founded, no-one knew about climate change. It was believed that nature cleansed itself. Nowadays, Ossi Leiwo is extremely worried about the state of the climate.

“Earth Over­shoot Day gets earlier every year. Nowadays, it is already in August. It feels good that Oilon offers solu­tions for climate chal­lenges and that the emis­sions can be reduced to such an extent that no-one has to drastic­ally reduce their quality of life.

What about the future of Oilon?

“Thank­fully, that’s someone else’s problem.”