Häfele Group is celebrating its 100^th anniversary trading and recently survived one of its biggest challenges with a cyberattack earlier in the year. This blip in its long-standing history is not deviating the company from its course of growth 

Celebrating its centennial year, Häfele was established by Adolf Häfele and Hermann Funk as a hardware shop in Germany supplying joinery fittings.

Although still privately-owned, it is now a global business with €2bn revenue, employing 8,000 people across 38 countries, with 10 sales subsidiaries.

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One of its largest subsidiaries is the UK, which sells over 25,000 products to a wide-ranging customer base, including kitchen studios, generating a revenue of circa €115 million.

The 400-strong UK business is led by recently-appointed managing director Richard Curtis, who has two decades of experience in manufacturing and distribution.

“I’m proud and privileged to be running Häfele UK. It’s a great business. We have great people and some good plans going forward”, he says.

Richard Curtis points out: “While our 100th birthday is an opportunity to celebrate, clearly what we need to be thinking about is the next 100 years.”

Cyber-attack strategy

What Richard Curtis didn’t envisage to be part of those plans was the need to create a strategy for recovery from a ransomware cyberattack, which took place across the group just four weeks after he started.

“It was quite an interesting induction to say the least”, he smiles, adding “but it was a tricky period. We immediately set up a dedicated crisis team in the UK, which meant we could cascade information on a daily basis.”

He praises the collaborative efforts of the Häfele UK team, which had to return to paper-based practices to help collate and process customer orders.

It was no mean feat considering the business can produce 6,000 picks a day and offers a next-day delivery with 5:30pm cut-off.

Curtis also thanks Häfele customers for their loyalty during the trying time: “We don’t underestimate how difficult it was for them, and we thank them for their patience and understanding.”

And now the company, which Curtis says has always invested in IT, has a “state-of-the-art” system, which is “resilient to modern day cyber challenges”. Häfele has also trained its employees to spot phishing emails and attacks.

Curtis adds: “So I’m pleased to say, we came through it, we’re better and stronger for it. That’s testament to everyone in the business for getting us through that tricky time.”

Manufacturing expertise

Against that backdrop, its impressive Häfele is continuing to enhance its business, particularly when Richard Curtis says the company is already “unique”, adding: “We are the only company that can offer a one-stop shop. It’s a unique proposition and compelling for our customers”, and he adds people still don’t realise it is a manufacturer as well as a distributor.

Häfele acts as a UK distributor for brands including Vauth Sagel, AluSplash, Grass and Smeg, however Curtis adds: “It’s a little-known fact about Häfele but we do actually manufacture our own products, from hinges to flaps to lighting, from seven of our own factories across Europe.”

He highlights the manufacturing capability of its popular and patented Minifix fitting, which he says “revolutionised” the flat pack industry, because it offers accuracy and speed of kitchen installation unmatched by glue and dowel.

“We manufacture 3.2million Minifixes a day from our factory in Berlin. I’m told, if you stack all those together it is the height equivalent of 10 Shards in London.”

Evolving product lines

And now the company is further expanding its 25,000-strong product portfolio in the UK. Product, innovation and development nanager Tom Fletcher comments: “We’ve always worked closely with our customers to understand their pain points, and we now use those insights to harness the expertise and experience of our team to come up with a new way of doing things.”

It has seen the creation of patented Flex Lighting, which can be bent to go around angles, and push fits into dedicated profiles, all controllable by Hafele’s Connect Mesh.

“There’s nothing else like that in the lighting market. And I should know because I was in it”, says Richard Curtis who led the Aurora trade lighting business in the UK.

Available in a choice of cool white or warm white, Flex Lighting can be used with plinths, worktops and splashbacks.

It can also be combined with Modu3, Häfele’s new modular shelving system, in a choice of ready or part assembled packages, and which allow kitchen retailers to expand their design capabilities into the rest of the home.

Further down the line, Häfele is planning to introduce own-brand appliances, in the next 18 months to two years.

Added value service

Using its expert product knowledge, Häfele has also recently introduced its suite of Service+ package.

It includes Service+ Customised, offering a range of custom manufactured solutions such as bespoke timber drawers and worktops shaped to the customer’s needs, and its Service+ Knowledge, created to arm retailers and installers with product and industry knowledge via the Häfele Academy.

Sam Melling, service+ project head, comments: “Our customers face a unique set of challenges. Their order books are full, but the skilled expertise required to deliver work and elevate their offer are hard to come by.

“Through Service+ we want to offer the extra pair of hands so many of our customers desperately need and give ways to increase their profitability and efficiency further.”

Curtis explains: “Ultimately customer service is part of our DNA, it’s what Häfele stands for. Being close to our customers means being one step ahead.”

Market trend forecasting

In a bid to not only help its customers now but in the future, Häfele has conducted market research to discover future market trends.

Following on from Functional Spaces: Kitchens for Living which explored the impact of kitchen design on mental health following the pandemic, Häfele has released a second report – Functional Spaces: Homes for Living.

Head of marketing at Häfele UK Natalie Davenport comments: “During COVID there was a huge spike in home improvements, projects of all scales and sizes, but economic circumstances following that period put many plans on hold. In our more recent survey of 2,000 homeowners, however, there are indications of households’ plans to spend on their current property in the coming years.”

She explains: “If we can identify trends a couple of years ahead, or things that come down the track that allow customers to grow in their geographical area, in particular, then we can help and in turn, we grow.”

Agile for growth

The market is undoubtedly challenging, with consumers having less disposable income, and uncertainty requiring greater agility. However, Häfele is responding with a “relentless” focus on its customers.

While Richard Curtis cites the company’s biggest achievement as being the growth of the privately-owned business, both geographically and in revenue terms, when thinking about the next 100 years, he says: “We have a clear strategy that supports further growth and ultimately we want to execute that strategy.”

Q&A – Richard Curtis

Managing director of Häfele UK Richard Curtis about adding value to the business, learnings from a cyberattack and the importance of an engaged team

Q: What attracted you to the company? 

A: Häfele is privately-owned on a global scale, meaning the company can take a long term view, which is always a sound basis for building long-term customer and supplier relationships, as well as investment decisions.

Häfele’s reputation is outstanding for customer service, for product and for technical expertise.

When you pull that all together, it’s a great recipe and a company where I felt I could add value.

Q: Which of your skillsets or experiences appealed to Häfele? 

A: Lighting is a key growth area for Häfele and one would like to think my background, as former managing director of trade lighting supplier Aurora, will help drive that objective.

Also, as a manufacturing and distribution professional with 20-plus years of experience, I can bring many qualities to that area of the business as well. I think it was a good fit all round.

Q: How did Häfele being hit by a cyberattack, within the first couple of weeks of you joining the company, rank as a challenge in your career? 

A: It’s not a challenge I’ve faced before, thankfully, but ultimately businesses are always faced with challenges, whether that’s a recessionary environment or more recently the COVID pandemic.

The principles for dealing with them are exactly the same. It’s about communicating with your stakeholders – which we did. We needed to develop a clear recovery plan – which we did.

It’s also about communicating with your workforce and engaging them in the process.

It was an incredibly challenging time, but the resourcefulness and engagement of employees gave us the ability to serve customers through that period and I got to know the global team more quickly than I would have otherwise.

Q: What will be your focus going forward?

A: Clearly a full recovery from the cyber-attack has been the priority, and ensuring our 5:30pm order cut off for next day deliveries was achieved.

As the largest distributor manufacturer in the market, with 25,000 items across multiple product groups, we have a plan to concentrate on the areas within the product range that can deliver growth for our customers and ultimately us.

Most recently that’s been focused on new products such as Flex Lighting, Bespoke Timber Drawers and worktop surfaces.

Q: What is your benchmark for success? 

A: Success for me is not just about hitting the numbers. Although they are important, it’s about the culture, how the team grows over the next few years and how the group overall leverages its synergies to help our customers

Q: Who or what inspires you? 

A: Over 30 years in business, I’ve learned from many excellent leaders and colleagues. Of course, you often learn the most from negative experiences and what you could have done to achieve a better outcome.

Q: What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given? 

A: Listen to people, empower them and be yourself.