Services offset slow growth: is service the ticket to growth and profitability?

European coatings companies are now focusing much of their efforts on services to offset the effects of slow growth in demand in many paint sectors.

Services are a means of differentiation at a time when coatings products have become increasingly standardized. In fact, in some market segments, competition mainly revolves around services rather than paint. Furthermore, as coating companies build up and extend their services, they are finding they are being pitted against new rivals from outside the paint sector.

Raw material suppliers, which have for some time been active in creating services for their coatings producer customers, have even been expanding their services downstream to paint users.

In fact, some services in the coatings sector have proved to be so popular or to have such potential for growth and profitability that they are regarded as more than just a means of selling coatings and other manufactured products. They are being promoted as distinct tradeable items with their own pricing structures.

Akzo Nobel and pigments maker Ciba Specialty Chemicals have been setting up services to operate as stand-alone businesses. Most services in the coatings industry are, however, likely to remain marketing tools for coatings products, primarily to boost sales but also to prop up margins when prices are under pressure.

THE IT REVOLUTION

Many of these service efforts emerged from the IT revolution, in particular from the arrival of the Internet which has provided for the first time a communications network for keeping in regular contact with customers, especially DIY consumers.

ICI Paints was one of the first decorative coatings manufacturers in Europe to launch a design service for consumers in which they can choose color schemes for rooms in their homes. The MousePainter project is linked to an online ordering service under which samples are delivered free to the door.

IT has become a prime medium for providing services and assistance to professional decorative painters, particularly in the area of e-commerce. Nonetheless, throughout Europe, the decorative paints center--usually owned by a coatings company-remains the major point of contact with the professionals, acting as a hub for both the local supply of paint and services.

SigmaKalon is using its own and franchised chains of decorating centers to strengthen its presence in European countries in which it is relatively weak and to make inroads in emerging markets like those in Eastern Europe.

In Italy, the fourth largest decorative market in Europe, SigmaKalon has been forming a network of Sigma Service Centers, which are a mixture of franchised and wholly owned outlets.

"This is probably the most fragmented market in Europe with over 1,000 local paint manufacturers competing in the professional sector," explained a SigmaKalon official. "Since we started opening service outlets in Italy we've progressed from having a comparatively small market share to being at least one of the top ton. The centers have been our means of employing services to forge long-term relationships with Italian painters."

Over the last few years, SigmaKalon has set up approximately 500 franchised deco shops for painters in Poland, which have enabled it to maintain a market leadership in the country's decorative sector.

The spread of dealer outlets and franchised shops has heightened the requirement for training among distributors. At the same time there has been a rising demand for training among users of industrial coatings.

Tikkurila, the paint subsidiary of Kemira of Finland, recently opened its first purpose-built training center after running training courses for some 70 years. One of the reasons behind the project was a need among dealers and customers for more practical know-how about the application of paints.

Half the space in the center in Vantaa, Finland, is devoted to training in areas such as the use of spraying equipment and applying paint to building exteriors.

Many of the 2,000 trainees attending the center annually will have already undertaken distance learning courses. "(These) will continue together with the practical learning days in Vantaa," said Rami Kuparinen, Tikkurila Paints' customer services manager. "A newer offering will be seminars, teaching tailored for various customer groups and certification training in products requiring special skills."

Some of the customers are given free training, while with others a small charge is involved. Tikkurila has also been advertising the courses at the center to attract non-customers who pay a fee to cover the cost of training materials and the charges of lecturers from outside the company.

"In this way we can keep the level of our courses high and at the same time make people a little more committed than they would be if there were no costs for them," said Kuparinen.

SPINNING OFF SUCCESS

Approximately 25 years ago, Akzo Nobel's car refinishes business started charging body-shop customers for services such as business and financial guidance, provided under its Sikkens auto paint brand.

One of these services has been a bench-marking system under which groups of body shops compare their performances with each other. The concept behind this scheme was employed as a basis for a new auto accident management operation set up last year under the name Nobilas.

It was run separately from Akzo Nobel Car Refinishes services, with its main customers being insurance companies and car fleet owners. With its knowledge of the running of body shops, Akzo Nobel was able to establish a stand-alone service to manage the entire repair cycle from the accident to the return of the vehicle to its owner.

"The creation of Nobilas was a natural progression from the extensive knowledge of car repair processes, which we have been applying in our Sikkens services program," explained Chris Wall, global marketing manager at Akzo Nobel's car refinishes operation.

In April, Nobilas was uncoupled from the car refinishes business to become an independent entity within the Akzo Nobel coatings segment. Although its main operation is accident management, it also has a vehicle image management unit looking after graphics for commercial vehicles.

As if to underline its autonomy, Nobilas recently acquired a leading accident management company in the UK, owned by Aon Corporation, the U.S. risk management and re-insurance brokerage.

SUPPLIERS TAKE IT FURTHER

While coatings companies are selling services separately from their products, their own suppliers are doing the same. Ciba has recently launched its Colibri color matching system, which stemmed from a service provided with its pigments but is now marketed on its own.

"Ciba charges separately for the whole Colibri range," said Sonia Megert, head of services and e-business at the company's coating effects segment. "This is part of the Ciba color service offering and unrelated to products. All coatings manufacturers can use it--irrespective of the products they use."

The company also sells Colibri to a variety of downstream operators in coatings and other sectors such as plastics, packaging, graphics and imaging. But it does not see itself as being a rival to coatings manufacturers since Colibri is one of a number of color matching systems provided by a range of companies active in what is emerging as a new market.

As competition in services intensifies, companies in the coatings sector are having to learn new skills from those traditionally required to successfully sell paint.

SEAN MILMO 

EUROPEAN EDITOR

[e-mail]