UAFM success stories 🎉

The Topmebel group of companies confidently rises to the top of the furniture Olympus

This year, the Ukrainian group of companies “Topmebel” set itself an ambitious strategic task – to turn its production unit from an auxiliary into a self-sufficient modern furniture production and bring it into the leaders of the domestic industry. And even the current quarantine restrictions did not prevent this desire. The owners and leaders of the group of companies took advantage of the quarantine pause to get training at the furniture business School of the well-known furniture public, which should help them in an expedited, effective and full-scale solution to the plan. We spoke in more detail about this with Marina Kolesnik, CEO and co-owner of the Topmebel group of companies.

– The strategic course for a radical reorganization of the company was taken by us last year. It was decided – including in accordance with the recommendations of such authority in all matters relating to the furniture business, such as Vitaly Ivakhov – first of all, to switch to the horizontal structure of the organization of the company. According to this progressive concept, building a company should have a minimum of managerial hierarchy and a maximum of employee independence within their tasks, subordinate to the general strategy of the company.

Without undue modesty, I can say that we are among the champions in furniture import and retail. And in terms of volume (third in Ukraine in this indicator), and in the perfection of the organization of these processes at all stages. Including logistics. Working with two hundred distributors, we provide and guarantee a single pricing policy throughout Ukraine. That is, our furniture costs the same for Odessa, Lviv, and for Volyn, regardless of whether they buy furniture in the salon of their city or in the online store. Believe me, this was not easy to achieve and just as constantly to maintain this price stability.

Recently, the company successfully completed a large-scale export project – complex turnkey furnishings of forty rooms of a five-star hotel in the Israeli city of Eilat (together with Eskada-M, a well-known domestic manufacturer of laminated boards, which, in fact, attracted Topmebel to this project). Eskada-M chose Topmebel as partners not by chance, but knowing about their production capabilities, about which Mrs. Marina said this:

– Our factory is “sharpened” for mass production, that is, we can develop a significant number of similar units of furniture in a short time. This gave us the opportunity to provide the rooms of our Israeli client with furniture for a month and a half.

The successful implementation of this project has convinced us that our ability to quickly and efficiently implement such projects is our significant competitive advantage. We really can guarantee the stipulated short deadlines for the “right” money.

Having understood this, we set about developing, first of all, this direction of our furniture production, which provides, first of all, for improving the furniture and furniture industry by transforming the TopArt factory from the subsidiary unit that is accompanying our retail (essentially an appendage), which it was before, at present self-sufficient enterprise – with engineering, design, technological, managerial services, with its own sales department. Something has already been done for this. For example, a design department has already been created, a sales department has been formed specifically for project furniture. Therefore, we boldly and with pleasure were ready to take up another similar Israeli project, but quarantine prevented our visit to Israel to settle the formalities of the new contract and solemnly surrender the previous one.

However, to increase the production of contract furniture, we lacked the equipment to meet the demand of economy-class hotels that cater to furniture at more reasonable prices, mainly of panel materials. They needed to be equipped with modern, high-tech and high-performance machines.

To modernize and expand the furniture capabilities of TopArt, in particular to complete the woodworking equipment, a grant was used, which was obtained by companies under the USAID Competitive Economy Program.

– Tell us in more detail what your “TOP STORAGE” warehouse outsourcing project is?

– Our warehouse outsourcing is based on the capabilities of an automated rack warehouse. We guarantee tenant customers the responsible storage of their goods, providing such warehouse services as delivering goods to the warehouse from suppliers, shipping to the destination, labeling, packaging or repacking goods arriving at the warehouse in large quantities. If this is furniture, then we not only deliver it to customers, but also collect them and perform other installation works.

The next service is transport, which is also part of warehouse outsourcing. We not only deliver our goods with our own transport throughout Ukraine, but also provide transportation services to others.

First of all, to our tenants, among whom are mostly furniture mates. By the way, we also planned to develop this type of service this year. First of all, through the acquisition of additional cars, in order to attract less hired.

– What do you, who have reached champion heights in their field, gained so much experience that you can be teachers for others, are lacking in what made you start studying at the School of Furniture Business Management?

– When we make a strategic bet on increasing the production of various contract and hotel furniture, it is no longer possible to be half-amateurs in practical furniture production. To become a full-fledged player in the project business, you need to have sufficient skills not only in sales, but also good knowledge of everything that relates directly to the production of furniture. It was our decision to take up training and the desire to modernize, develop our furniture factory so that it quickly became one of the best in the industry. And for this one cannot do without reforming on the basis of the philosophy of continuous improvement of “kaizen”, without introducing other methods of economical management and effective business management.

 

We create a better furniture environment in Ukraine! 💛💙