Meeting of  the sector in Brussels

The European manufacturers’ umbrella organisation invited delegates to Brussels to attend the third Fediyma Forum at the Heysel auditorium on 21 and 22 September. President Gilles Cailles’ speech of welcome to the event was heard by more than 300 participants from 20 countries. These included not only representatives from DIY retail groups in Belgium, France and Finland, but also the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and Hungary as well. It was only managers from the German DIY retail sector who failed to register for this international event. Even Obi’s CEO Sergio Giroldi, who was invited to attend as a speaker, cancelled his attendance.
The focus at the Fediyma Forum was on the European DIY store customer.
The main focus of the two-day event was on the discussion of a great number of topical questions centring on the European DIY store customer. Delegates were able to hear at the very first talk who exactly this customer is, where he goes shopping, what his preferences are and whether there even is a typical European DIY customer. The presentation by Frank Quix of market research company Q&A and François Corda of Dyrup France sketched in the main results that have emerged from the consumer survey commissioned by Fediyma and carried out in ten countries of Europe. One of the conclusions reached by the survey, which entailed interviewing over 7 000 consumers, suggests that there is no such thing as a standard DIY consumer market in Europe, and that both manufacturers and retailers should offer customers complete solutions to their problems, rather than simply selling them products.
A meeting of the European DIY Retail Association (EDRA) was held on 22 September within the context of the Fediyma Forum. Here EDRA’s president Manfred Maus also spoke on the industry’s forward-looking strategies, and on the requirements and demands of tomorrow’s DIY customers. His challenge: “If companies want to continue to act successfully, they must change certain aspects of the image they present to customers.” He sees customers themselves as the clear winners as they benefit from lower-priced and good-quality products.
In his talk, Peter Parma of Kingfisher/Castorama Russia shed light upon the Russian DIY market and the habits of consumers with regard to their home. In Parma’s eyes, Russia with its population of more than 144 mio represents one of the most significant DIY markets of the future.