Belgium to meet market challenges with inovation and investment
Belgium flooring companies have pledged to invest in innovation and creative product development to overcome a series of challenges that is holding back growth in the European market.
“it is not easy to be successful in this market with many challenges that are making it difficult to grow,” said Fa Quix, the head of the Fedustria, Belgium’s textile and furnishing trade body at the launch of the Flanders Flooring Days marketing initiative this week.
Supply chain issues and COVID have taken their toll but Mr Quix said that workforce issues were “really very troublesome” with hundreds of vacancies for skilled staff in the West Flanders area alone.
“It is a new crisis and a difficult one to resolve but it is essential to be innovative and creative – especially in developing higher added-value products,” he said. “That is the essence of doing business in the flooring sector in a challenging market like this."
He said the manufacturers hosting Flanders Flooring Days had already demonstrated their commitment with €250m of investment over the last two years in developing their capability in the region.
Answering a question from The Stocklists at the press conference in Ghent, Ruben Desmet – President Flooring at Unilin said: “We anticipated Brexit. We are all entrepreneurs and we set out to overcome the new barriers and have been successful – we see stability in the UK market which is very important to us.
“We had no time to anticipate Covid and we were stretched to service our customers in the right way,” said Mr Desmet. “it has not been easy to maintain service in the perfect way we would wish but we will make it happen.”
Ruben De Reu, product director at Modulyss, echoed the push for added-value products: “Successful Business has to be much more about premium products and not the commodity end of the market.
“We also believe that more and more sustainable products are the way forward – we do need to come up with more circularity in the flooring sector to make this a success,” he said.
The first edition of Flanders Flooring Days is running this week with 10 top floor covering manufacturers in Belgium simultaneously opening their doors to international buyers and retailers from all over the world.
