Zimmer America is a system provider for Textile, Non Woven, Carpet, Recycling Technology, Solar Power, and US-Market Entry Consulting. Amongst these multi areas, how do you see your Group placed in textile and allied verticals?
Zimmer America remains committed to our roots of being a full service textile machinery supplier for the USA and Canadian market as we have been since 1985. The same is true for the proprietary carpet digital printing process CHROMOJET, produced by ZIMMER AUSTRIA and marketed through ZIMMER AMERICA for both North American markets.
Non Woven was started two years ago and ZIMMER AMERICA is fortunate to represent the finest Italian Non Woven machinery makers BEMATIC GROUP (BEMATIC, TEXNOLOGY, TECTEX) as well as BOMBI Mecanica for thermo bonding ovens, colanders and terminal non woven equipment.
Recycling machinery and complete plant set ups for waste recycling was added in 2010 and put ZIMMER AMERICA amongst the top suppliers for that industry in the North American market.
Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic technology from our Austrian partner company KIOTO clear energy confirms the new trends in America for renewable energy and is of equal interest for ZIMMER’s current textile customers as it is for the market in general.
As we all know, machinery was the sector that has faced the brunt of financial havoc, the most. Has the situation improved now?
Capital investment is still suffering worldwide and especially in North America, even though some signs of recovery became visible at the end of last year and beginning of 2010. By positioning ZIMMER AMERICA into total customer system solutions rather than just offering machinery, ZIMMER has positioned itself to further growth and in fact has been growing all through 2009 and continuous to do so in 2010.
So, what traits prevail in global machinery market, nowadays?
The whole textile and non woven industry is moving towards complete system solutions rather than individual machinery purchases. With reduced engineering capacity due to internal downsizing at our customers’ end, the demands and expectations towards specialty and full service suppliers such as ZIMMER AMERICA keep raising and ZIMMER is rising to the occasion.
Given the state of the industry, what are the company's key attributes and strengths?
Giving that full system solutions approach to our customers and backing it up with first class customer service after the initial sale is the key to the success of ZIMMER AMERICA. “We service what we sell” is not tenet chosen lightly. It has been the condensed “mission statement” of ZIMMER AMERICA since ever. This makes customers decide to work with ZIMMER rather than other suppliers who concentrate on sales only and do not put service and support first.
How will science of pricing play role in molding growth of this industry? And therefore, will China continue to impose threat on European players who are under pressure of high operating prices and squeezing profit margins?
The China threat is slowly dissipating because most European machinery makers have positioned themselves with production capacity in Asia or strategic partnerships for manufacturing in the Asian area. Innovations still takes place in Europe and to a smaller extend, in North America. There will always be “copycats”.
So, what future growth strategies will Zimmer Group route?
Continue service to textile core customer base, expand offerings strategically and with full system solutions approach, and concentrate on service, service, and service.
The importance of the environmentally conscious design (ECD) continues to increase. Isn’t it? How is your R&D wing been placed on this front?
North America is finally waking up to renewable energy; ECD and closing the loop to make producers responsible to take post consumer products and recycle them back into the production process. Shaw Industries and Mohawk Carpet i.e. two of our large carpet customers are full vested in this and make investment decisions based on it. ZIMMER AMERICA works very closely with these and other companies in this area and will continue to recognize opportunities and keep growing our customer offerings as their demands expand.
#######DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
