Interview with Michael Büenfeld
When innovation became a tradition at OBO
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ow did innovation become a real tradition and even part of the company’s corporate DNA? Mr. Michael Büenfeld, Chief Sales Officer at OBO Bettermann Group, told us the story and what it means for everyone involved in the company’s ecosystem.
Dear Mr. Büenfeld, we are delighted to have OBO Bettermann as an active partner for the EUEW convention, once again. How did OBO experience the past two years, considering the pandemic and its challenges for the business environment? After the outbreak of the pandemic and the resulting lockdown measures, we were faced with two primary areas of activity: Protecting our employees in our company group and ensuring the availability of goods for our customers. We managed to achieve the first goal thanks to the tremendous flexibility of our employees, work from home, protective measures in administration and production and by digitalizing our communication processes. We accomplished the second goal with our high vertical range of manufacturing at our European production sites and our well-stocked warehouses. This enabled us to deliver at all times and to remain a reliable brand supplier for our partners in the retail and trade sectors. It also gave us the opportunity to further expand our market position against the competition. The OBO Bettermann Group, with more than 40 subsidiaries worldwide, are extremely well positioned and consequently succeeded in offsetting the economic effects of the pandemic in the various markets we are active in. As a result, we were able to look to the future with confidence and invest despite the corona virus pandemic. For instance, we offered all of our trainees who completed their training in spring 2021 full employment.
Another effect of the pandemic: It clearly propelled the digitization process in the electronics industry. It has also led to our collaboration becoming more digital. Whether among ourselves or when communicating with our customers. We, at OBO, responded with great speed and used digital platforms to communicate with our customers. OBO Bettermann is a company that describes itself as “a company that stands for tradition and innovation, in equal measure”. How does it manage to bring together these two apparently contradicting notions? What does tradition represent and what does innovation stand for at OBO Bettermann? It is our firm conviction that tradition and innovation go very well together, and innovation has become a tradition in itself at OBO, part of our corporate DNA and even our brand name. After all, OBO stands for "without drilling" and marks one of the first major innovations of our company, which were then followed by many others. Up until 1952, anyone who wanted to place an anchor had to use a drill – then OBO engineers developed the first metal anchor that could simply be placed in the wall without drilling at all. This was a prime example of OBO's innovative spirit: Innovation reflects our claim to constantly scrutinize and further develop our products. For OBO, tradition means solidarity - with our employees, our customers and the region. As an independent family business, this is what we have stood for over 110 years, and tradition, just like the spirit of innovation, is an integral part of our values and the measure by which we conduct our daily business. Your company’s product range comprises articles for the electrical infrastructure of buildings and is categorized into the three application areas of industrial installations, building installations and safety and protection installations. For which of these categories do you consider the supply chain to be most challenging and why? OBO maintains a very high proportion of in-house production in all three areas of application, putting us in the comfortable and secure position of being able to act independently of suppliers in a number of instances.
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