Ambitious goals

The company is the biggest supplier of wood for the garden in its home country of France: there Forest Style, which sells 6.5 mio articles annually, has a market share in excess of 14 per cent. The company is also the market leader in Spain. Since 2010 the French enterprise has been working in Germany, where it aims for sales in the eight-figure range. Sales on this scale are needed not least in order to achieve what the parent company of Forest Style, the French Edenside Group, has in mind for the next five to six years: to double group sales from the current total of some € 80 mio. “It is the professed aim of Forest Style to be in every garden and on every balcony in Europe,” says commercial director François Millot. The Forest Style map is already correspondingly far-reaching, showing activities in Poland, Portugal, Benelux, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Lithuania and Russia, and overseas as well. The available product range includes fencing and privacy screens, patios, vegetable gardens and raised beds, border edgings, planters, products for children, pergolas, arbours and summerhouses, as well as outdoor furniture, decoration and animal housing. The materials used are Polish and Nordic pine (pressure-treated), varnished pine, oak and other hardwoods, as well as WPC. One main focus is on raised beds. They have accounted for an increase averaging 270 per cent in France every year since 2009. In addition, children have become an increasingly important theme. Production is carried out by 160 employees in southwest Poland; the facility is currently being extended. The head office in France has a staff of 50. The Edenside Group was founded in 2010 as the parent company of Forest Style, a specialist supplier of wood for the garden that had been in operation since 1999. The group includes four other brands. Garden Max, a supplier of barbecues (speciality: the la plancha grills that are popular in the southwest of France) was acquired in 2001. Added next in 2007 was the Madeira brand of summer houses, which is also planning to enter the German market. Artimber, a Polish supplier of wood for the garden, was purchased in 2010. Then came Edenside’s acquisition of its rival Cerland in October 2013. The group employs a combined workforce of around 270 and is pursuing its professed goal of expansion, both organic and through further acquisitions. The majority shareholder is Vianney Descheemaeker, and since…