Background & Opportunity
Herold GaLa Bau’s transformation began with a positioning problem. Although the company had worked in garden and landscape construction since 1985, the documented pre-scaling situation was a relatively small organization without sufficient business focus. Mission Mittelstand case materials describe approximately 25 employees, around €4.5 million in annual revenue before the consulting phase and about 25 project enquiries each month. The same material reports €8.5 million in revenue in 2021 and identifies €4.5 million as the revenue in the year before consulting began. These figures describe different reference points and should not be treated as a single-period comparison. The central management decision was to reposition Herold as a specialist external contractor for large construction projects. Its target customers included property developers, general contractors, public institutions and major urban or commercial developments. The service portfolio covered planning, construction, roof and vertical greening, paving, playground construction and maintenance, but the strategic emphasis moved toward complex, larger-scale projects. Positioning alone was not enough. Herold established finance, sales, calculation, construction-management and HR functions, while introducing semi-automated systems for recruitment, enquiry handling, quotations and calculation, and onboarding. These changes were designed to make higher volume manageable and to reduce dependence on an informal small-business structure. The company also invested in specialist operating capacity. On 30 October 2022, it received its first Liebherr MK 140-5.1 mobile construction crane for Berlin-area landscaping work, especially roof and vertical greening. The crane could operate quietly and in electric mode without on-site carbon dioxide emissions. The reported scaling indicators were significant. Mission Mittelstand stated that monthly project enquiries rose from about 25 to about 70, 2022 revenue reached approximately €16 million and headcount reached 105. A later Berliner Volksbank-related LinkedIn post cited growth from 30 to more than 140 employees and from €4.5 million to €23 million, alongside project values of roughly €300,000 to €5.7 million. That post is third-party, unaudited and does not provide a precise year or accounting definition. The case therefore has two parts: a strong operational scaling phase and a later resilience problem. Public information says Herold entered bankruptcy proceedings, and BBF Group announced an acquisition in 2026 that retained about 100 employees. No public source in the fact sheet establishes the specific financial cause of the bankruptcy.
Original Problem / Model
The first lesson was to replace broad activity with a clear large-project position.
Turning Point
The second was to build departments and workflows before complexity overwhelmed the team.
Core Decision
Specialist equipment expanded capability for demanding urban, roof and vertical-greening work.
Execution / Model / Acquisition Changes
Reported growth reached 70 monthly enquiries, €16 million revenue and 105 employees in 2022.
Measurable Results
Later bankruptcy proceedings show that scale must be matched by cash-flow and governance discipline.
Lessons
BBF’s acquisition preserved about 100 jobs and continued the business through group integration.