Ideas for the trade

Special emphasis is put on active sales back-up for the company’s customers. As Scheurich’s marketing manager Axel Schröder explains, “The emotionalization of the sales displays in garden centres is a very important criterion for  a successful selling strategy, since the final purchasing decision is made right there at the stand.” The company makes special furnishings, innovative shelving systems and other aids available to its dealers, though, according to Schröder, some of them have reacted with great caution to the offer, despite demonstrable increases in sales.
Scheurich’s new products include the “Country”collection with its handcrafted relief pattern.
However, retailers are happy to take advantage of the pallet offers, which include for instance hand-decorated goods combined with plain-coloured products. Customers are quickly attracted to the simpler and therefore more cost-effective products through the “eyecatchers” on the pallet. An equally successful sales concept offers plants in combination with decorative pots.
DIY superstores and garden centres are the most important and most expansionary channels of distribution for Scheurich. The involvement of numerous DIY chains abroad fits in very well with Scheurich’s plans, since the company is meanwhile strongly represented throughout central Europe and exports account for a 33 per cent share of sales.
Help in elaborating new trends comes from De Bock & Dekker, an agency that has also worked for WMF and Leonardo. Once the ideas suggested by the design team have been developed as far as the first samples, a direct approach is made to the target group of customers: employees take on customer surveys in garden centres and DIY stores. “We have a very high success rate for the introduction of new products,” says Schröder. “We need approximately six months from the development stage to full production of a new product.”
“Inspiration” is Scheurich’s answer to the nostalgic sixties and seventies trend.
Management and staff at Scheurich are proud of the fact that the company still employs all current methods of producing ceramic articles. Every imaginable technique is also used for the subsequent surface coating process, from lavish hand-painting to a fully automated spray finish.