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.

Ronald Baarslag, general manager

2019 has been a great year for Fabory in which we have taken several important steps to further strengthen our market position and secure our growth for the upcoming years.

We have invested and extended our warehouse facilities in Tilburg (the Netherlands), Brno (Czech Republic), and Shanghai (China), to be able to store our full range of more than 120,000 fasteners. Our China warehouse allows us to ship directly to customers from Asia.

We’ve also further grown our digital capabilities to attract new customers and ensure an effortless experience to our existing customers. We’ve also done extensive work to improve our offering of fastener related products like power, hand and machine tools, abrasives, safety and chemicals.

During the year we’ve increasingly experienced the impact of the slow down in automotive, BREXIT, and the trade war that is going on between the USA and China. We expect car manufacturing to struggle throughout 2020, but BREXIT seems to have come to a solution and we have good hopes for some sort of deal between China and the US. If 2 out of these 3 uncertainties come to conclusion, we expect a better economic climate and a positive outlook for 2020. If the uncertainty nonetheless continues, we may see a year of economic slowdown.

So, in conclusion, we see different scenario’s on the revenue side, but this is part of being in this industry. In all scenarios, we will be working on expanding our capabilities and improving our service to customers in order to expand our market share.