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Gone are the days when customers depended on the furniture makers, now the opposite …

Gone are the days when customers depended on the furniture makers, now the opposite …

The conversation with Діма Патіс (Dima Patis), co-owner of Eskada-M, went beyond the usual framework for such stories, and therefore a well-reasoned and logical explanation: Dmitry heads the Export Platform of the Ukrainian Association of Furniture Manufacturers, and therefore is actively and efficiently engaged in pushing export horizons for all members of the Association, it will be successful development and approval of the domestic furniture industry as a whole in the world market, because it really has good potential for that.
“For seven months, the UAFM Export Platform has been exporting for everyone, so to speak,” says my interlocutor. – And, of course, the biggest achievement and the most significant result today is the project furnishing Ukrainian with products of three thousand apartments in Israeli new buildings. It is largely unique because it was born spontaneously, directly during the participation of several furniture companies in the Ukrainian government trade mission to Israel.
It is instructive in this story that representatives of Ukrainian furniture showed their full openness and ability to flexibly adapt to the characteristics of the local market, consumer culture and mentality of those with whom they negotiated in front of a potential Israeli development partner. And it is also important: they declared their readiness to quickly adapt their furniture to the requirements of the customer, as well as to provide, in particular, a convenient organization for the implementation of a joint project. In particular, its logistic component. Thus, from the very first time we convinced the Israelis that we can be reliable partners, fully and in due time, fulfill their part of the obligations.
If not uncommon, then the peculiarity of the transaction is that it is documented for the convenience of the parties between the Israeli developer and one of the companies participating in the trade mission, to which other companies participating in the project have delegated the right to represent them in this project. The peculiarity is also that we offered an Israeli developer not only to include Ukrainian furnishing of apartments sold in the cost of a loan that the developer provides to its customers (that is, to sell furniture not in parts, but apartment-by-apartment). And one more of our initiatives by the Israeli side was perceived positively: we were taken to perform designer visualization of apartments, interior design using Ukrainian furniture from the project participants from the Ukrainian side. And they wouldn’t approve it, when in Israel to design an apartment is a very expensive pleasure, an ordinary newcomer can’t afford. We offered cheaper, but at a high level, as Ukrainian interior design is now really capable of providing such a level.

– Why did the results of the talks, which took place in March, during the star visit of a group of Israeli architects and designers to Kiev, turned out to be much more modest?
– About the final result is still too early to say. As a result of the Kiev negotiations, the first acquaintances took place, having scoured, so to speak. Now the parties that have found mutual interest one after another, deepen the relationship. That is, the process of achieving real transactions continues.
Again, the path to final agreement is long, mainly due to the fact that our furniture makers do not know the local market, its features and realities, form their proposals without taking them into account – the way they are used to forming for Ukrainian customers – therefore they face rejection. We have to make adjustments, look for mutually acceptable options, synchronize the bilateral vision of business benefits. What is happening.
And one more nuance: in the first case – during a visit to Israel as part of a government trade mission – we were lucky to immediately enter a large project, the same architects and designers who came from Israel to the March talks offered smaller projects or even small projects . To ensure them, we need a different approach, solving problems of a different nature, and therefore more time, in order to find effective ways of solving them that are acceptable to both parties.
– Export prospects in the Israeli direction will remain a priority for the platform, which you head in UAFM?
– Yes, and will continue to be one of the priorities. Because the Israeli market is really worth it. His import needs are endless.
We, with our international financial donors, who help the Association including in terms of increasing the export potential of the furniture industry, have come to a common understanding that it is not worth scattering efforts, trying to simultaneously master dozens of markets in different parts of the world. We must choose two or three really promising, competing for Ukrainian furniture and develop them purposefully, focus fully on them, finely studying their features, establishing close business contacts, exchanging visits with potential partners. The Israeli market is just that, on it we have already acquired the first significant positive experience, and it should be increased.
– Time to share your export experience with your company.
– In the markets of Poland and Scandinavia, to which our products are mainly supplied, we have, we can say, stabilized our presence. One of the relatively new for us export opportunities to enter new markets is cooperation with export-oriented companies that use our board materials and products from them. By promoting their furniture to foreign markets, they also popularize our products. Also, our new export practices include participation in foreign hotel projects, one of which has been successfully implemented in the same Israel, which has already been discussed a lot. We competed with the Turks, and won the rivalry of proposals. Our task is to carry out the details of the case products, as ready as possible for the final assembly. There are assembly teams that the hotel is hired for such needs. They do their work quickly, because we have done all the preparatory operations very accurately and with high quality. In this case, Escada-M acts as a subcontractor who fulfills the order of the local contractor who fully implements the hotel project. He sends us drawings, specifications, and we follow them to order for him. In the future, we will also practice this option: together with the products prepared for this or that project, we will send to the site our specialist who will coordinate the installation work and will be an intermediary between the company and local installers.

– Tell us about the peculiarities of the Scandinavian market, our furniture makers in general are practically unknown.
– The countries of Scandinavia in furniture are far ahead of us. And not only from us. There almost, oddly enough, there is no mebliovnitsv. The furniture company is an office and a warehouse of finished products, according to the order of the company it is made in other countries, where for them on convenient and advantageous conditions, according to their design and drawings, they can make such furniture that they need. And to eighty-ninety percent of the finished product received the status of domestic, it is already at home in something brought to the end. In fact, having an order from such companies, you actually sell them not furniture, but the opening hours of your woodworking machines. In other words, you rent their machines to them. This is a different business, another contracting relationship. Ukrainian companies for the most part are not ripe for such relationships. “Escada-M” among the lucky ones who managed it was necessary for the Swedish furniture makers. We make worktops for them, the exact same ones that Poles will make, for example, for them. The customer for such a unification specifies in detail all that we must comply with in the production process of such countertops. Such cooperation is very profitable for the contractor: you do not need to think about it, guess the product design, finishes, and the like – all you have to do is to precisely follow what you have been appointed by the customer.
Maybe I will disappoint our talented designers, but the truth is harsh – our design there will not be able to be in demand for more than one decade. To a large extent and because the Scandinavians prefer their own, domestic. Even the Germans there are few products can sell.
For us, England is closer in this sense and more accessible. Therefore, we are in the Association and are preparing for the participation of our companies in the next government trade mission, which is scheduled for this country. It is promising for our furniture, in particular, because for the high level of wages, the furniture there turns off its production, so England is guided by imported furniture, which gives our furniture makers a chance. Thanks to the support of foreign donors, we can even, as participants, take part in the Manchester furniture exhibition. This is a significant plus compared with participation in a government mission to Israel. Again, we will not get along with a one-time event, but to carry out expansion into the British market persistently and purposefully, as to another strategic one for us.

The heading “Success Stories” was founded in the framework of a grant project with the support of the Swiss Cooperation Office in Ukraine, the project name: “Increasing the level of cooperation and trust with joint participation in international and national government procurement” – TENDER TOGETHER.

 

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