feature: falmec Falmec – UK business
development manager Ron Blount and MD Sean Drumm
Falmec aims for pole position in the UK
cooker hood market Sean Drumm, Falmec’s exclusive distributor in Ireland, was approached by the Italian manufacturer to head Falmec UK the following year. Simon King headed to rural Hertfordshire to meet Mr Drumm and Ron Blount, the company’s business development manager and a former executive at Blanco UK
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ean Drumm first came to the UK from Ireland in 1989 looking for work
opportunities and he was recruited by Blanco, where he worked for six years. The sink brand then supported Mr Drumm
to go back to Ireland, and he started selling Blanco over there and, through his Showtime distribution business, has been doing that ever since. “We then added Falmec and Lacanche to
Showtime,” Mr Drumm said. In July 2019, Falmec and its original distributor, Euroline, decided to go their
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separate ways. “At that time, Falmec said it had six months to fix things,” Mr Drumm said. “It came to me and I said that I would need some assistance, and the first person I called was Ron Blount, my old boss at Blanco.” To show his commitment to the Falmec UK business, Drumm has a 40% stake in it, with the remaining 60% of shares owned by Falmec. “I never wanted to leave the UK in 1995 and I was always hoping that someday I would come back, so the Falmec opportunity arose, and I wanted to do it,” Mr Drumm said.
In August 2019, Mr Blount and Mr Drumm
went over to Falmec, having already produced a business plan. “Falmec was very supportive of it and
reckoned establishing a UK subsidiary was the right thing to do,” Mr Drumm said. “The brand has known me since 2000 and there was an element of trust between myself and Falmec.” Falmec UK began trading on January 1, 2020 and the business had made plans to go to KBB in 2020 and it started to recruit – then came Covid-19. Mr Drumm said: “Covid was, of course,
brewing and KBB was a disaster. There was so much uncertainty in the market, what was going to happen around the world and were we going to live or die. “We had a commitment and we had to do something. All the plans of buildings and warehousing were put on hold; we worked out of a two-bedroom flat, because in the background, people were still working. Some kitchen studios were still trading, some were closed completely, and I imagine the owner/ operator kitchen studios said ‘hell with this’ and
October/November 2022
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