She was one of the first people to join Ostermann in 2011, three years after the German group had landed in Italy. She accepted the challenge to join a totally unknown company that introduced a new way of selling edges (and even more so today) to offer a service even to customers who don’t need big volumes. Since then, Valentina Beccaro has gone a long way, and today, she is the managing director of Ostermann Italia.
“I was given a great opportunity to grow, first in sales, then as team leader, and finally in my current role, thanks to the close relationship and daily collaboration with Jana Krupp who, fifteen years ago, was entrusted to open a subsidiary in a difficult and demanding market like Italy. She wanted me in this role to create a success story from scratch, a story that me and my team are now carrying on”, Baccaro said.
“Today, Ostermann Italia is just one of the subsidiaries of a big group built on the invention of a new way of selling edges, a business model that perfectly matches the Italian economic landscape, where you can find large industries using big volumes, and a host of small and medium businesses with “custom” consumption. We have worked to be their partne
Valentina Beccaro
At the start, it was not easy to operate with such an innovative approach: we focused on our values, namely speed, variety and assortment, showing that we could offer excellent, quick service, relieving customers from many issues, first of all the need to keep huge stocks. Rather than asking customer to adapt to the requests of suppliers, we want to be suppliers ready to adapt to their needs”.
How does your organization work?
“The subsidiaries work in close contact with the “mother company”, giving feedback to ensure the most effective operations in each market. Based on this dialog, we build new collections of edges, matching the decors of the leading European panel manufacturers, for which we offer matching edges. This is what happens also with Italian panel manufacturers, we are constantly in touch with them.
It’s up to the subsidiaries to identify the most requested collections for their market and submit samples to the customers, creating new demand and new opportunities: not all markets are equal, they have different requirements and taste, and it’s up to us to identify new development trends, based on the daily interaction with our customers and the market.
Of course, all the subsidiaries share the global scale of the group, working in syntony and in synch; over more than 70 years, the Ostermann group, established in 1948, has developed an endless collection of edges that we cannot store and deliver entirely from our Italian site. But you can just visit our online ship, select any product, and receive your order within 24/48 hours”.
… but beyond edges, you have added more products, right?
“Right: with effective logistics and a well-tested organization, we can be a reliable partner also for other supplies. So, little by little, we have added glues, adhesives, handles, accessory, hardware…
Our new catalog is so vast and rich that we had to split it into two volumes: “Progettazione creativa” (creative design) e “Bordi lavorazione pratica” (practical edge processing). The portfolio is really huge, starting from our vast collection of edges that can also be ordered “to size”, in any length and height, from our sales office or through the online configurator in our e-shop.
And then, handles that can be delivered in the desired size, glues, skirting boards, connections, complementary elements for furniture and much more… We want to stimulate the creativity of our customers, suggesting ideas and solutions…
The starting point is always the knowledge of products and sales mechanisms, the desire to offer ad-hoc consulting. This approach requires the constant training of our sales staff, this is another priority for our company: our staff is continuously reskilled and upskilled, as we offer more and more products, each with its peculiarities and features in terms of application and maintenance.
And what about the future?
“We will keep standing close to handicraft businesses: this statement is the core of our operations, it represents our focus and our passion for work.
The furniture industry will remain our core market, a target that we will address building on our values (speed, variety and customer service), with the goal of further increasing the share of online orders, leveraging more and more advanced configurators that will enable our customers to submit orders independently, wherever they are.
And we want to stand closer and close to those who choose, to support them through our hotline, always read to share what we are and what we know…”.
by Luca Rossetti
ostermann.eu
