Patrick Nolan - An Irishman in Glashütten

A graduate in Applied Physics, Patrick Nolan kicked off his career with a local company, namely Merck - albeit not in Merck’s HQ in Darmstadt, but in Poole, England. So it seems only logical in retrospect that he and his family would end up in the RhineMain region. Even if the path that led him here took him first to Zurich.

Patrick is a man who clearly follows his heart. And his heart told him he wanted to leave England and live on the Old Continent. That was back in the early Noughties. So he and his wife and two then small children sold up house in England and headed East, for Europe. Not that they spoke any German, let alone Swiss German. While the new millennium started for the Nolans in Switzerland, when his then employer wanted him to go even further East, namely to Taiwan, Patrick declined and went North instead, to Samsung Europe in Schwalbach, just outside the gates of Frankfurt.

He never looked back. When his next employer wanted him to relocate south to outside Stuttgart, Patrick realized, “No, I was a Hesse, and I was in the region to stay.” It was to be a decision that he has never rued and that led to him not only putting down firm roots in the RhineMain region, but also setting up his own firm…

The entrepreneurial culture of the Frankfurt Metropolitan area no doubt helped him move into business on his own, first as a representative for a semiconductor company, working from home, now Glashütten. He and his wife loved living in the small town out on the edge of the forest and yet having the city and the airport down the hill – and the kids had soon settled in school.

With the overall conditions being so favorable, Patrick moved the business forward. Indeed, today he has gone from home-officing for Solomon Systech to becoming Solomon Europe’s Executive Director, handling their graphic controller and video ICs sales. At the same time, on the back of his network of contacts and relationships Patrick elected to found ZBOE Displays GmbH – that was ten years ago, in 2013. Remaining faithful to his Merck beginnings, he was back with LCDs, with the emphasis on providing industrial, medical, and automotive clients with products customized to their specific needs. It was a small step from there to hiring, and five years in, ZBOE set up an office in Oberursel, with a core specialist team and external consultants to help with design and manufacturing partners in China and Europe.

Home is where the heart is, meaning for Patrick at the heart of things, and that’s why he so loves the RhineMain region, with its crucial geographical advantages. Thanks to its central location in Europe, he can drive to clients in the Benelux countries and still be back for supper. And the same applies to trade shows inside Germany. Or he can fly to the States as quickly as he can to Asia. Suppliers and clients are all equally close at hand.

Over time, the client base has shifted and ZBOE’s focus today, as Patrick explains, “is on supplying customized LCDs, cameras and electronics to some very high end car manufacturers.” The components are as specialized as the automobiles, which are Supercars and Hypercars, meaning cars with a price tag of €2 million-plus. The annual roll-out of such cars may be small but given the degree of customization required for the electronics and mechanical parts the value of the business is anything but...

So what does an Irishman in Glashütten do after work? Well, here, like Sting’s Englishman in New York, he can be himself: “I’m crazy about golf. I play in Idstein, and all round Hessen for that matter. Or my wife and I take the dog out into the Taunus for a hike.” Last but not least, as home is also where you come from, as an Irishman “Frankfurt to Dublin airport is only a 1.5 hour flight. So we can head there for family events, even at short notice.”

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