Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener market

Named after the Roman god who is often depicted as having two faces – due to its ability to look to the future and to the past – the Janus Perspective is a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders, who have all contributed their retrospective of 2019 and thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2020.

Jörgen Rosengren, CEO

After most of our customers had enjoyed very strong growth in 2017 and 2018, 2019 began in the same style. However, once backlogs were filled up and manufacturing plans adjusted, Bufab, like many of our colleagues in the industry, began seeing a weaker demand from June 2019 onwards. This weakness was accompanied by increasing macroscopic uncertainty such as trade conflicts, and BREXIT.

Such variations however are not new to Bufab. In fact, they are part of our everyday life. In the last 40+ years, we have learned that demand goes up and it goes down. But we also know that in the long run, only three things matter – to put the customer first; to deliver a little better than promised; and to make the team and the company stronger every year. That’s what we set out to do in 2019, and we think we succeeded.

Having delivered well despite tough bottlenecks upstream in 2017 and 2018, we felt that we had built even stronger relations with our customers. This translated into further new projects in 2018 and 2019. We are very grateful for this sign of confidence. As a result, we’ve been able to grow organically even in a weaker market. We are also quite proud of the official recognitions our customers bestow on us, such as technology giant Schneider Electric naming us the most responsive supplier, globally.

We are using this increased market share to invest in the future, under the umbrella of our Leadership 2020 Strategy. This means a massive expansion of our sourcing capabilities worldwide, aiming to build the World’s Best Supplier Base™. We are using our unified global IT platform as a basis for investment in digitalised processes, such as our One-Touch RFQ™ and EasyConnect™ tools. We keep refining our global management system, called the Bufab Best Practice. Most of all, we’re investing in our team – bringing new talented people on board, and developing our experienced experts, some of whom have been with us for decades.

An important strategy in Bufab is to be a safe haven for strong companies facing a generational change. In 2017, Kian Soon in Singapore joined us, and in 2018 Rudhäll Group in Sweden also joined us. Last year, we made two additional important and strategic acquisitions. In July, we announced that HT BENDIX A/S in Denmark as a new sister company in Bufab, bringing with it decades of expertise in kitchen and furniture fittings. In November, we were proud to welcome American Bolt & Screw Mfg Corp into the family, strengthening our presence in the USA and in Mexico. Both companies were chosen by us (and chose us) because we have the same basic values. Also, both companies see that with Bufab, they will be allowed to continue with ‘business as usual’, while at the same time getting help to grow even faster than before.

Looking ahead at 2020, the uncertainty is not smaller than before. It appears that most industry watchers are expecting lower underlying demand, especially in the automotive industry. Bufab’s focus, however, is on the same things as last year. We are going to put the customer first. We will deliver a little better than expected of us, and thereby strengthen our customer and supplier partnerships. We will also continue to invest in our team and our tools to make our company even stronger for the future. This is the same strategy that has fuelled our decades of growth.