Florian Werner, Director Sales Centre West, Altendorf Group shares with Wood & Panel about the Group’s presence in the Americas, their new strategy as a Group and lot more during AWFS, Las Vegas.
What’s your perception about AWFS Fair and North American market as a whole?
We feel very excited and very proud to be directly with our own team for the first time in the USA, specially here in Las Vegas, on the show. So we are the showing the customers the new portfolio including the edge banders and also showing them our new group strategy that we are working with.
As a Group, is there any new strategy?
We already have opened our own daughter company in Moorsville, so the idea is getting closer to our customers to understand better the demand of the market, demand of our customers and how we can serve them best. We are still working with partners, we have build up a network of distributors and we still keep on talking to new agents.
Tell us your presence in the Americas.
So in NA, we are quite active at the moment with our own team, at the moment we are about 7 people, so sales and service in our own showroom and are quite active with our partners in Canada as well.
Southern American market will follow probably within the mid-term, but now our focus is on the US and Canada.
ASA (Altendorf Safety Assistance) has been hugely appreciated in LIGNA. Are you promoting ASA here, too?
Safetly is of course a topic that is of high importance all around the world. We don’t have the demonstration here in the show at the moment, this was quite a short time, but we are planning to show that next time in Vegas, of course, or may be even at Atlanta already.
Do you have a service center in America?
We have service centers and technicians here, but we also have our distributors that do service as well. In Canada, we have our main partners and they are doing excellent service and working very close with us.
What about the feedback received from the customers as you participate as a Group?
The customers, they come to our stand and appreciate talking directly to us and getting more information about new technologies, new innovations we are showing besides the ASA.
What is your main strategy for new customers?
The strategy for the USA market is the same that we use globally so for us especially at the moment the main topic is digitalization of course- so you can see here the Magis software here of course and fo course safety. Safety will remain the dominating topics for the next years especially on the American market.
What about the Mexican market?
Yes Mexican market is also important for us, we have been on the fair on the show in January this year. It was quite successful fair for us but for the moment our focus is on the North America.
