Interview Bert Fransens
MAGAZINE
Consistent FlexiForce strategy, in Assa Abloy In April 2011, FlexiForce Group was acquired by Assa Abloy. A lot has happened since then, so time to sit down with FlexiForce Group CEO, Bert Fransens, to hear his view on the effects of the acquisition for FlexiForce and for FlexiForce customers.
Bert, what has been the major change for FlexiForce since the acquisition? Well, as former owner, I can say that there is of course a certain period of time needed to get used to the fact that a new owner wants to be involved in the business, especially when there are, for example, investments involved. Also more reporting is needed then in the past, when we were used to talk monthly with the board of FlexiForce Group in a more informal way. But, we all knew that when we sold the company. Much more important than this, is that Assa Abloy as an owner, challenges us as management to speed up business growth and pursue new ideas. I personally like such a strong pursuit of improvement, growth, opportunities very much. Assa Abloy sees what FlexiForce is capable of, so they really push us, while encouraging us to follow the
Do you have any examples on this? Sure! As you know, we started FlexiForce LLC in the United States, because we believed in the importance of our presence in that mature overhead door market. This greenfield operation was growing slowly and it would have taken us a very long time to build up significant market presence. With the backing of Assa Abloy, we acquired Helton Group, one of the top 4 hardware companies in Northern America. With the integration of Helton and FlexiForce, we now serve the US-market from two distribution points, one in Abbotsford (BC) Canada and our own start-up in Dixon (IL) USA. We started production of struts and tracks in Dixon now. The total turn-over of FlexiForce is now almost divided 50%-50% over Europe and the Americas, which gives us a foothold in the two main, mature, door markets.
“ Our strategy remains to focus on supporting our customers in being competitive” consistent strategy that we have been following successfully for years: Supplying hardware solutions to our customers. But now, with more financial backing and all kinds of other support, more things are possible than in the past, enabling a better service level and further improved product portfolio.
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Another example is that we see a major opportunity in the Turkish and Central Asian market. We needed to be there to secure our position in that Emerging Market at an early stage of the growth. With support from Assa Abloy, we opened up our own warehouse and sales office. I can continue with more examples.