Executive Insights
54 FDM ASIA NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
W Z The Character Of
Peter H Meyer, Owner & CEO, Survey Marketing + Consulting GmbH & Co KG has much to share about the philosophy and concept behind ZOW events. By Goh Tz’en Long.
design, or who has the best catering but it should be focused very much on the core essentials, meaning the products, and by talking about products, also not those from 10 years ago, but the novelties, so the innovation. It should focus on the communication between
the partners in the market, the clients and the suppliers. Still today, we say, ZOW focuses on the essentials, meaning: Products, People, and Communication. And all infrastructure we developed over the years, is done only to support this core ZOW concept. The limitation of space for example was an idea from the industry. They said, “If you concentrate on the novelties, you don’t need endless space.” If you show hospitality to your clients when they come into your factory showroom, why does this hospitality get lost once they come to a mutual event of the industry? So we say the hospitality, the entrance, parking, everything is free
Photo: Survey
What inspired you to set up ZOW? I started after my university MBA studies in a German furniture franchising company, Musterring. And after 11 years there with marketing responsibilities, I joined the suppliers’ industry, becoming managing director of Duropal, which is a famous edge brand. In 1991, I decided to start my own company, as a consultant and very soon it was apparent that I was so much anchored in this industry, because most of the new business I received was from this industry. I concentrated on the furniture and furniture supplies industries, and it happened in the early 90s, when people from this industry in Germany came to me and said, “Peter, we have a problem, the furniture industry becomes more and more competitive, so it is under more pressure to develop innovation. And we as furniture suppliers have one trade show event in Germany, that is the interzum, which takes place every second year only, and then only in May, meaning that the most important furniture show in Germany which was the M.O.W.; it is not so famous internationally, but M.O.W. is really the time when orders are written, is very short after this show in Koeln for the furniture components.” So we are travelling around, and it happened to me also before when I was in Duropal, already in January, to show our novelties in individual meetings to our clients. And it would be much better if we had a platform where we can do it all together, which would be more efficient for the suppliers as well as the customers needing furniture. Couldn’t we start something like that? And that was the initiative, and from this initiative, we had working groups with some representatives of the large-scale furniture supply industries and myself. And we developed a concept. This concept is that competition shouldn’t be on who has the largest booth or who has the most beautiful stand
Executive Insights for the guest. They are not only visitors; they are guests. On the other hand, industry also doesn’t like conventional shows where you have to fill so many different pockets. You have to pay for the space, catering, promotion, and this and that. They also said, and we realised it: one package price, of course, a little different in relation to the space needed; different packages on offer, and then once you order one package, you get all the support free, including the stand building. That was the beginning, and still going strong. What are the reasons behind the partitionless concept? That was also the idea of the industry. They said, “The piece of furniture is more than just bringing together single pieces, single pieces have to fit together.” And in many situations, you have the classical design of layout and have all these separated boxes. So it opens a platform from which people can say: “Oh, this fits nicely to what I selected there.” I can see it in my view already. It enables us to bring together in those stands furniture suppliers who were not cooperating at all. For example, people making the edgebanding, which is fit to the surface of the boards, they have cooperation and relations with each other, so they crisscross and sometimes bring one client to their partner, so it was also demanded to leave it as open as ever possible. There is certain disadvantage when it comes to serious negotiations about prices. We know that, but we decided nevertheless, we want to keep it open, because this should be the place for creativity, and maybe the prices are negotiated later in the factory or over dinner. The Novorex Iberica edgebanding machine was displayed at ZOW Madrid. Will there be more machine displays in future?
This is a very interesting question. The Novorex people in Spain, came to our sales and marketing people and said, “We want to attend ZOW.” We said that normally we don’t have machines. “Yeah, but this is the right place where we see the right people, especially for this machine. We want to attend.” And they really pressed it through. By the end of the day, I think it was a win-win situation for both sides. The Novorex machine which was shown there is a machine, which is Peter Meyer (left), CEO, Survey Marketing + Consulting, and more important when you Bernd Rademacher, CEO, Survey Asia Marketing + Consulting. look at the one-off pieces, manufactured there under terms of impact. We plan to offer a platform to declaration and design than when you the manufacturers of direct printing at look at how it is done. Because this is an the next ZOW Germany. edgebanding machine with a magazine So, once again, I could never imagine of 18 different edgings and electronic that we have say, short cycle presses, controls where they can make single double end tenoners or something pieces with different edgings each, so like that displayed at ZOW. When new what comes off is highly decorative. So technologies have a strong decorative this machine fits very nicely. I think just impact, I could imagine that we at least, putting a saw there; at least I cannot leave our limits somehow open. We will imagine the decorative impact of such never become a machine show. There is a machine there. no intention to do that. But when there is We plan to do something different at a high impact in the design of furniture, the next ZOW in Germany. Up till now, in the decorative, we see very interesting it was more or less state-of-the-art that plans for us. FDM the decorative surface of a board is done by films, veneers, and of course also decorative printed papers. The MFC manufacturers tried to prevent for many years, décor printers from attending ZOW. Once this barrier was broken, printers of decorative papers took this platform for their business. But now, there is a new development: Direct Printing. And again, the machine has, in my eyes, more decorative impact than technical
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