From Nizhny Novgorod with Love
Slavonic Furniture Company increases its exports.
12/12/2018
SFC has raised its overseas exportation numbers. In 2018, the amount of the company sales abroad has doubled comparing to last year. The company exports a wide variety of products. SFC supplies the Eastern European countries with goods-in-process, and sends ready produce to Germany, Israel, the Middle East and the Baltics. The company’s goods are also available through OTTO and Amazon online stores.
“We have long-term agreements with all our partners,” says Dmitri Kulikov, commercial director at SFC. ”We look at providing to large network clients, and design our products regarding their specific statements of work. Our key advantages are moderate prices, and flexible production that allows to shortly provide the required scope of supply. Besides, we maintain our quality, and we are rather close to Europe. All these features let us easily compete with Chinese manufacturers.
Our great flexibility allows us to guarantee constant deliveries and meet large orders, up to dozens of thousands of an item.”
Designing a product for a big client will take from one to three months depending on how difficult the task is and how many iterations are involved. Delivery time rests on the volume of order and the program terms regarding every item. SFC asks clients to estimate the scope of supply, and stocks up on the raw materials. Fulfilling an order up to delivery to the client’s store takes up to a month.
According to Dmitri Kulikov, the way SFC cooperates with its overseas partners is the same they do business with Russians. The great expertise in collaborating with domestic networks helps the company to easily work with its export clients.
“We tend to primarily establish strategic partnerships,” explains the SFC commercial director. “For example, we have worked with Russian retailer Hoff since its foundation. Being a leading Russian upholstered furniture manufacturer, we discussed the product range even before they actually opened the first store.
Our partnership is created in several steps: we exclusively design products for a client, look at our prospects together, approve the statement of work, deliver the goods, carry out joint promotions.
I think Russian and European retail chains are fairly similar. We usually have the same procedure for them, the only difference is the language. Terminology and values of large retailers both in Russia and abroad are the same. However, they certainly look to different product collections. We supply Europe with some products that are not in demand in Russia due to typical apartment layouts and national habits, and vice versa. Large chains usually have purchasing office or category managers responsible for their products. Our professionals closely cooperate with them while creating tailored items and introducing them to the permanent product line.”
In 2018, SFC has concluded a contract with a company that possess several factories in China. Moreover, the company has provided IKEA with wooden parts for toys.
“These were baby steps,” explains Kulikov. “We might start regular supplies of the item. We thoroughly calculate our projects to improve their budgets and, if needed, we alter the product or the supply. It is a meticulous task that we constantly carry out to reach the maximum efficiency. In order to provide an attractive price, we steadily work on production costs and reducing our expenditures. We always consider these matters, and this is our key to success on the European markets.”
Currently, the manufacturer is negotiating with several large international furniture retailers.
“We know, we are competitive and interesting, we can produce popular goods that fully correspond to European standards. Our company has a FSC certificate, hence, we are certified to provide any type of wood starting from timber to an end product.” Dmitri Kulikov says. “We are experiencing an impressive growth in exports, planning to expand the collaboration with our current partners, and we are looking forward to the new ones.”
