By Natalie Davenport, Head of Marketing at Häfele:
While most of us will be glad to see the back of 2020, in some ways, this year hasn’t been all bad. Of course, it’s been an incredibly sad and challenging period, but the pandemic has also brought opportunity for reflection and remembering what’s important.
As an agile manufacturer and supplier to the KBB industry, we took 2020 as a chance to re-visit the products and services that make a real difference to our customers. The things that they couldn’t be without, but also new elements that might help fitters, as well as retailers and manufacturers get back on their feet.
To do this, we used the first lockdown to speak to as many of our customers as possible. We wanted to understand the hurdles that stood in the way of continuity, and how we can make changes of our own to help you work effectively and safely.
The pandemic may have impacted a lot of things in our personal and professional lives, but one thing our conversations highlighted was clear: whether you’re looking for technical, specification or design support, the need for collaboration and working together is more important than ever.
To help you secure new projects and continue growing your business during this new era, we’ve brought together some of our services and products. The result is Häfele Here to Help, a dedicated package of support for our industry.
The programme is designed to help installers, joiners, manufacturers and retailers to increase sales and enquiries, as well as deliver projects on time and to budget despite the financial, operational and logistical challenges presented by the pandemic.
It includes a reduced minimum spend to achieve free delivery until the end of March 2021. It also brings together several existing, value added services to make the design, specification and ordering process as easy as possible.
For example, our free-of-charge Lighting Design Service provides customers with a full specification and list of materials to create the look and feel required, and for the end user, transforms their kitchen design.
Häfele Here to Help also incorporates Häfele to Order, our bespoke, made-to-order manufacturing service that allows customers to order personalised packed and – in the case of lighting – assembled and tested products for their project. If you choose to add both the Lighting Design Service and HtoO to our Lighting Loox range, it arguably makes our products the easiest and quickest furniture lighting to specify and fit in the marketplace today.
Additionally, we launched a new technical specification support programme for sliding door gear. The pandemic has made it more important than ever for homes to be multifunctional, with properties now being used for everything from learning and working, to exercising and relaxing. Sliding doors allow families to create larger, more open plan areas which can then be broken up to create smaller, private spaces in a few simple moves.
With this increased demand, there are several technical elements installers need to consider to ensure they get the right hardware, materials and specification to suit a customer’s project, and our technical support service is designed to facilitate this.
Our customers simply need to call us with the dimensions of the space they want to fill, and the size and weight of the door they need, and our Technical Team will specify the best system, from one of the largest ranges in the UK, for the application. It makes the ordering process much more efficient, and when teamed with Häfele to Order, the door’s associated components, such as the track and rollers, can be cut to exact specification to speed up the process further.
As we look back on 2020, it’s one we’ll largely want to forget, but as a manufacturer and distributor, we’re determined to remember the good bits: the importance of working together and supporting each other.
EDUCATION | STANDARDS | SUSTAINABILITY | COMPLIANCE |
