Member Article

EEN helps Mainline fix its sights on Europe

A North West firm that has become a market leader in colour-matched fasteners and accessories for the decorative façade market is to expand into Europe thanks to support from Enterprise Europe Northwest (EENW).

Mainline Products is the only manufacturer in Europe that can accurately colour-match fasteners to solid, wood grain, metallic, anodised & uniquely, multi coloured fasteners for Alucobond Spectra & Reynobond Effects panels. This has seen the Newcastle-under-Lyme company steal a march on its UK competition.

Now Mainline plans to take that success to Scandinavia and central Europe as part of an ambitious growth strategy.

Explains Neil Fitzsimmons, sales director at Mainline,: “Our heritage is in window fixings and fasteners but design trends in contemporary architecture and rain screen facades have created significant growth potential for coloured facade fasteners and accessories, so we diversified into that market.

“No other company can custom colour match these accessories and provide such a fast turnaround on delivery and we now want to replicate that success overseas.”

Mainline originally planned to sell into Eastern European markets but a chance meeting with EENW at a UKTI event helped the company to develop a more focused export strategy.

Neil Fitzsimmons added: “Central Europe is a mature market for decorative facade systems with lots of distributors and our EENW advisor, Rodolphe Soulard, was able to demonstrate to us that Germany and the Benelux countries present the biggest opportunity to grow quickly in Europe.

“Rodolphe also introduced us to the Scandinavian market where rain screen facades are used extensively and we can expect positive pricing, so with EENW’s help we now have a clearly defined export strategy.”

The help that Mainline has received from EENW goes far beyond planning its export strategy: the organisation has also provided a database of potential customers for each market with named senior contacts.

Rodolphe Soulard said: “A significant part of our role at EENW is to provide the tools that companies need to begin their export journey. That might be providing access to training or visiting trade shows and often involves compiling information that can help to fast track them to the next stage in their development.”

In addition to generating sales leads with the help of these databases, Mainline is now also working with EENW to maximise the value of its attendance at BAU 2015 in Munich next January, the world’s largest exhibition for architectural materials.

Mr Fitzsimmons added: “EENW has already provided us with a list of decorative facade manufacturers that are attending BAU so that we can issue advance invitations to a sales presentation/drinks reception we’re planning during the exhibition and maximise the value of our attendance at the show.

“Our move into Europe is in its early stages but we already know that we can rely on EENW every step of the way and their help is giving us access to valuable information that would otherwise have taken months to compile.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .