From missed contracts to new opportunities: a Polish business story
For many small businesses, the biggest obstacle is not a lack of expertise or ambition. It is missing how quickly market expectations are changing. As sustainability reporting becomes more important in procurement and corporate decision-making, even experienced entrepreneurs can suddenly find themselves losing out. Not because their offer is weak, but because they cannot demonstrate impact in the format clients now expect.
This was the case for Paweł Raja, co-founder of Urvis Bike in Poland. With years of experience in the bicycle sector, he understood his market well. But despite that, he kept losing contracts until support from the SMERF project helped him identify what was missing.
I wasn’t aware of it at first, but it explained why I was losing contracts. Once we understood that, it changed the way we looked at our whole business.
Through the SMERF diagnosis tool and an individual support programme, Paweł realised that sustainability reporting was increasingly becoming a deciding factor for many clients. Urvis Bike was promoting cycling solutions, but it was not yet translating that work into the data and reporting companies increasingly needed.
That insight changed the company’s direction. Instead of simply offering services linked to cycling, Urvis Bike began developing a new model: helping companies encourage employees to cycle to work while also measuring the environmental benefits. In this way, cycling could be linked to concrete carbon savings and become part of a company’s sustainability reporting.
For Paweł, SMERF support was more than useful advice. It helped reveal a market shift he had not fully recognised and turned a painful signal (i.e., lost contracts) into a new opportunity. By adapting early, Urvis Bike is now better positioned in a market where transparency and measurable sustainability performance increasingly matter.
A valuable lesson for other SMEs
Across central Europe, many SMEs face similar pressure to adapt to greener and more transparent business practices. Targeted support can help them understand what customers are starting to require and redesign their offers so sustainability becomes a competitive advantage rather than a compliance headache.
Why cooperation mattered
SMERF’s tools for SMEs were not developed in isolation: the Diagnosis Tool and the training framework were tested and refined with companies across partner regions, so they work for businesses facing different market realities. At the same time, the partnership trains regional mentors to help SMEs interpret results and turn them into concrete next steps, combining a shared transnational method with locally delivered support.
Project: SMERF
Duration: 2023-2026
Budget: 2,49 m €
Partners: AT, HR, DE, HU, IT, PL, SK
