Round-up | NEWS
Symphony updates its marketing suite and Skyline Design Centre
SYMPHONY GROUP has refurbished its
20,000sq ft marketing suite in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, with new ranges and displays. At the same time, the Skyline design centre has also been upgraded. The Yorkshire-based manufacturer is currently celebrating 50 years
of designing modern and
traditional kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms. All kitchens are said to be built to last with furniture
awarded full FSC certification using wood from responsibly managed forests.
The new ranges to be showcased in the marketing suite include Harvard, Inline Studio, Princeton and Waterford. There is also a focus on Symphony’s Paint to Order collection, with sample doors displaying all the different colours available. There is also a new upgrade to the Paint to Order collection, as it
is now made with water-based paints and represents a further step towards Symphony’s sustainability goals. Symphony’s Skyline design centre, which is located 25 minutes from London Liverpool Street, has also been revamped. Features include new decors and innovations with Echo voice-controlled smart appliances and smart lighting, the new Linear Living decors and updated pocket folding doors. The Skyline team specialises in designing kitchens
and bedrooms for high-rise, city-centre living and works with developers, architects and specifiers. The facilities are also available for training sessions run by the Symphony training team as well as for customers’ use for their own meetings and briefings.
HPP: ‘lessons learnt from Covid and Brexit have made us stronger’
HPP HAS described the impact of Covid and Brexit as ‘tumultuous’ and believes that the upheaval to the industry will continue throughout 2022.
But the Oldham-based furniture component manufacturer and distributor also said that, as a company, HPP had grown stronger as a result. Sales director Gareth Evans said: “Although there
are
negatives as a business, we’ve grown stronger, because each time something negative happens, we find a solution to work our way around it. “We’ve had a shortage of materials that impact on production, but what we have done is multi-skill our staff more than ever before. We now utilise staff in so many different areas of the business. We’ve had to come up with a plan so that if there is a shortage that effectively makes a department overstaffed, we can transfer people around the business to where supplies are available to work on.”
Marketing and business development director Dan Mounsey added: “We’ve had to think on our feet and develop new systems and new solutions almost on a daily basis. You can’t predict what the particular set of circumstances or scenario might be, but whatever we might be asked to do, 10 times out of 10 the answer is a yes.” HPP reflected on the challenges that emerged after Brexit and from the Covid pandemic, citing shortages of HGV drivers, skilled workers, fuel, food and job applicants.
Looking back, purchasing director Alan Bolton
said of the effects of Brexit followed by Covid: “It’s difficult to know whether the challenges we’ve encountered are Brexit-related or down to the
January 2022 ·
pandemic. It’s like the whole world has gone mad. What happened with our suppliers, particularly those in the UK, is they shut down completely. For example, Egger closed down chipboard production lines for two or three weeks. It was unheard of – it’s like shutting down a power station.”
HPP admitted there was some uncertainty when they came back to work after the lockdowns. “When we came back in May and by July,” Bolton
said, “we realised the market was actually taking off better than we’d anticipated. As directors, we said that if we got to 80 per cent of where we should be in October, we’d be quite happy. But by July, it was
Compusoft and 2020 complete merger
SOFTWARE PROVIDERS Compusoft and 2020 have united in a merger of equals to create one company ‘to better serve their customers’ in the kitchen, bathroom, furniture, and window and door industries. The news follows July’s announcement that both companies intended to merge. The combined group will now have cross-functional teams based across Europe, North America, South America, Africa and the Asia Pacific region. “We are excited about the possibilities this combination will give our customers,” said Compusoft chief executive David Tombre.
“There will be an even broader range of solutions, backed by an extensive content database to power the sales of our customers. Our combined expertise will also give us the ability to accelerate innovation and maximise the potential of our products to meet our customers’ needs.” Mark Stoever, CEO of 2020, added: “People are biggest
our asset, and this combination brings
together some of the brightest minds in software from across the world, particularly in R&D, sales, content and support, united to better serve our customers. We look forward to what the future holds.” Compusoft and 2020 have said that further information on their plans for the future will be announced to customers in the coming months and that, in the meantime, they should direct any queries to their account managers.
evident we’d be back on track a lot sooner.” HPP added that the breadth and depth of the upheaval was such that in some cases lead times for orders went from eight weeks to 26 weeks overnight. The
company said that the unprecedented
demand that followed the pandemic is here to stay and that looking forward shortages will continue. Mounsey said: “People in our industry always say it will be better after Christmas. We tend to shut down for a couple of weeks, but the big manufacturers carry on working to build up stocks. We already know Christmas won’t make a difference this year. We’ve been told by suppliers they don’t foresee an improvement in supply throughout the entirety of 2022. What’s happened has created a two-year cycle (of shortages). There is no end in sight.” On the subject of sustainability, HPP said it believes “the message is not hitting home” and “consumers purchasing new kitchen, bedroom and bathroom products, have little awareness of the sustainability credentials of the goods they are buying, they say”. HPP uses chipboard from Egger and Kronospan. Mounsey said: “Our chipboard from Egger and Kronospan is carbon-negative – it stores more carbon than it releases. Chipboard has a 10-to 20-year lifecycle and then you can recycle it again afterwards. They have been trying to get that message through to consumers quite widely. “I don’t think it has filtered through to consumers yet. There is a big question about whether consumers will be demanding more sustainable furniture. It’s something we are expecting to come.” Bolton added: “But the big question is, whose responsibility is it to get that message over to the general public?”
Gareth Evans, HPP sales director, concluded: “I
am sure the message will get there eventually, but it seems to be a slower process, partly because of the complexity of all the different products in a kitchen.”
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