The success story of Engel & Völkers in Switzerland with Peter Frigo Part I

Peter Frigo is the founder of the Engel & Völkers Residential Master Licence in Switzerland and currently still runs some of his own offices - offices which he plans to place in new hands in the future. Read part I of the interview below to find out more about Peter Frigo and how he established and developed Engel & Völkers in Switzerland.

Engel & Völkers Switzerland: Peter, we would love to find out more about the founder of Engel & Völkers Switzerland. Tell us about your previous career path and what inspired you to set up the Engel & Völkers brand in Switzerland.

Peter Frigo: Before getting involved in the Swiss real estate sector, I was the Managing Director of a German company in the building supplies industry for around eleven years. The company employed several hundred members of staff and boasted a turnover in the hundreds of millions. This company was part of a Swiss group and I was assigned the task of divesting of a portfolio of real estate in Switzerland from their pension fund. The sales proceeds were then to be reinvested in new properties.

At that time - over 20 years ago now - I had been starting to think about returning to Switzerland and setting up on my own. And so this was my golden opportunity!

Up to that point, I had had less to do with sales and more to do with the purchase of capital goods. As such, I was used to sitting across from sales staff and, naturally, I had been able to learn from them, enabling me to form my own sales ideas.

I managed to achieve excellent results in divesting of the real estate portfolio and my employer gave me a large cut of the sales price, meaning that I was then able to fund my first steps into the Swiss real estate sector.

At the end of 1997, I saw a small advertisement in the Official Zug Gazette stating that a German businessperson was looking for a partner in the real estate sector in Switzerland. We ended up meeting and, one week later, we founded a company together. And so it began, similar to acquiring an Engel & Völkers licence. Dunja Wirth, who, back then, introduced me to the ways of a real estate agent, still works as an estate agent in the Zürich Oberland.

Soon enough, we had established ourselves as real estate agents in the Residential and Commercial sector in both Zug and Zürich. My business partner then pulled out of our company when their German business was sold to Engel & Völkers.

Together with Markus Schmidiger, I got in touch with Christian Völkers and suggested working together in Switzerland. Christian Völkers was quick to get on board and so, at the start of 2000, we changed the company name to Engel & Völkers.

Markus Schmidiger became part of the company in 1999 and is still Chairman of the Board at Engel & Völkers Residential in Switzerland.

Engel & Völkers Switzerland: At that time, you were “only” Engel & Völkers licence partners in Zürich and Zug. How did you then set up a Master licence?

Peter Frigo: In 2003, Sven Odia, our former Expansion Manager, asked us if we would be interested in taking over the Master Licence for the Residential sector across the whole of Switzerland. That represented a financial challenge that wouldn’t be easy for us to overcome. As such, we wanted to continue to operate as real estate agents in order to be able to contribute the necessary funds to acquire, develop and run the Master Licence. And that’s exactly what we do to this day - still separate from the Master Licence - and, therefore, our own offices are run just like licence partners.

In 2004, we started to expand the areas of Zug and Zürich to include the regions of St. Moritz, Ascona and Ausserschwyz with Pfäffikon and Lucerne. As time went on, our colleagues at these branches decided that they wished to run these licence areas themselves. In this way, we were able to put the licences for Zug, Zürich, Küsnacht, Rapperswil, St. Moritz and Ascona in good hands at an early stage, with individuals who we knew well and who had a good set of business skills. This was excellent for us, as, with these new, now self-employed partners, we could be rest assured that only good things lay ahead for us in terms of the further development of the Engel & Völkers brand in Switzerland.

Following this, the turnover made by Engel & Völkers in Switzerland has grown each year, bar just one, and keeps growing to date. In 2019, thanks to the creative energy and relentless commitment of all our partners, the brand succeeded in making a turnover of 40 million Swiss Francs from courtage through the sale of residential properties for the very first time. The transaction volume of all the properties sold amounted to over 1.2 billion Swiss Francs.

Engel & Völkers Switzerland: That’s an incredibly impressive story. We would love to find out more about how it is possible to take over an existing licence. What requirements have to be met?

You can find out more about how to become a licence partner, or take over an existing licence, in part II of the interview, available next week.