European Distributors’ Stapf: Buyers Need to Judge Both Import Price & Quality

“We should not build any more barricades against Asian products, but all imports do meet the European industrial demand for documented, constant and reliable quality,” the executive secretary of the European Fastener Distributor Association.

Bernd Stapf told FastenerNews.com in an interview during Fastener Fair Europe that “unfortunately a cheap price mostly is applied to nonconforming quality levels. Very often buyers are impressed by the price and not able to judge the related quality. So we are really interested in fair pricing but we need a serious competition not a muddled barrier.”

The EFDA was formed when “Europe started becoming one market and European distributors realized they had common interests.” Stapf, retired from a fastener career with Bossard and Borstlap International, now assists EFDA president Bernhard Berrang and vice president Steve Auld in directing the mutual activities of the German, French, UK, Spanish and Italian distributor associations. There are 170 distributors with sales totaling Euro 3.2 billion (U.S.$3.85 billion).

Stapf noted the challenges for European fastener distributors are very similar to North American counterparts. “All distributors need to find more value for their customers, ” Stapf pointed out. “That struggle is the same for colleagues worldwide. If you don”t generate more value then you add cost to a product.”

Editor”s Note: The full interview will published in the next issue of FIN. �2005 FastenerNews.com