News & Events
Hinge - Workspace Wizard
Lamex Trading Co. Ltd.
Lamex has climbed steadily to the top of office furniture design. It's earned its stripes by securing broad geographical coverage, a significant customer base and a brand name analogous to Sony for office furniture. In recognition of such achievement, HNI, an office furniture conglomerate, sought to be part of its success while expanding itself. By investing in Lamex's present and future, HNI hoped to re-energize the brand in terms of corporate identity, customer service provision and showroom functions. Lamex has undoubtedly solidified a place in the Hong Kong market and now it looks to secure a leadership role in mainland China as well.
Since its induction in March 2006 the Hong Kong outlet has grown in stock with overarching ambitions for the future. HNI not only invests in its smaller membership companies, it also fuels design innovation. In the case of Lamex, HNI lends it some core principles for successful expansion. One-stop service, best value for money and Rapid Continuous Improvement (RCI) are just a few. Addressing the needs of today's customers, Lamex has become a one-stop-service provider for those creating or renovating office spaces. For instance it has partnered itself with other product suppliers to provide its customers with a convenient bundling service – why go to five different companies when you can go to just one? The actively implemented RCI focuses on efficiency and productivity by eliminating waste, lowering cost and maintaining consistent quality.
Focusing on the mid-ranged price sector, Lamex endeavours to provide the best value without compromising on quality. Constructive discontent drives a constant focus on the customer and end user, on how they can be provided more, better, faster and for less, is essentially the same as RCI where efficiency and productivity is a premium, achieved by eliminating waste, lowering cost and maintaining consistent quality. Its new flagship outlet, opened in September, demonstrates a newfound client approach. The bright showroom occupies most of the floor with its office taking over the remaining quadrant. Upon entering customers are greeted with an impressive new signage in sunny corporate colours. The c-shaped layout features large product runways where office chairs are the models. Office set-ups allow browsers to view the comprehensive collection of products while mock-up areas enable others to visualise specific models.
In fact, Lamex has actively maintained a constant dialogue with those from the A&D community. Occasionally hosting “Lunch and Learns”, Lamex opens the floor to designers for input on trends and product improvement. These opportunities are seen as mutually beneficial. In assisting designers with their projects staff gain insight into the current furniture needs. It is hoped that visitors view the showroom as a studio atmosphere where designers can become familiar with products by experimenting with them. In addition the facility is designed to provide lots of support services, design interactive tools and reference materials. Lamex hopes to evolve into a house of brands offering both local and international clients a comprehensive range of products. Its present objective is to simplify its product range and focus on the Hong Kong and Mainland China markets.
Lamex also celebrates its newly designed Shanghai showroom this year. Situated in the heart of the business district, it catches the eyes of passersby with its LED light-box window display. Following the same concept as the Hong Kong showroom, it offers itself as a working studio, one featuring a comprehensive product collection and spacious display runways. The showroom is the perfect venue for mock-up presentations and consultation between staff, designers and end users.
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hinge: What did Lamex offer HNI by becoming a member and what did HNI offer Lamex in exchange?
Sanjay Sivanandan: HNI was looking for a major player and a trusted brand...one with good broad geographical coverage, very strong manufacturing capabilities and high quality products. PRC is one of the largest and fastest growing office furniture markets in the world. Lamex, having a parallel philosophy and similar values to HNI, demonstrated an ability to drive Aggressive Progressive Growth (APG) in PRC. This would perpetuate the high quality and best cost sourcing support within the HNI family. There's also a substantial emergence of global clients – these clients have global needs to create and sustain a global culture... to be reflected in their global office workspaces. Therefore, by joining HNI Lamex can leverage the capabilities of HNI and bring its presence into Asia.
Nobody has had the capability to provide uniformity in office environments until today. This is helpful for us because you can't just work with the current needs, you have to predict the future needs are as well.
One of the big HNI strengths is as the back wheel in the operations side. The front wheel is the market side. HNI has implemented the Lean System as a way of managing things and the RCI process. This refers to a constant focus on the customers and end users... how we can provide them with more, better, faster and for less and how we can deliver performance that's always improving. The more efficient things become, the lower the cost, the higher the quality, the better consistency.
So, if you look at where the customer is heading... any big multinational company would say that's exactly what they want and that they're looking for someone to deliver it. Within that context, you have smaller companies that are regional. There are also smaller companies that want the well-known brands, the design influence. Certainly in China we can't forget state-owned enterprises, the government industries, the small to medium enterprises... and you need different models. We have a ‘Split and Focus' Strategy to identify exactly what that segment customer wants, whether a China state-owned enterprise or small business and then focus on meeting that customer need.
h: How does Lamex benefit from being associated with HNI?
SS: HNI certainly benefited from acquiring Lamex since it was already established here. What HNI can do for Lamex is to put in the investments needed to drive more product innovation... being much more market responsive. We're working hard to establish relationships with the A&D community. Partly it's because it's the A&D community that drives the marketplace. They identify and create the trends. Our Sales & Marketing team here has launched ‘Lunch and Learns' where we invite members from A&D to come to our showroom for a lunch and season presentation. We learn just as much from them as they do from us. We bounce off lots of product ideas and take in input. So, the front-end contribution to Lamex is the capital, the investment, the growth. The back end is the operations.
h: What do you mean by Lamex being a ‘total solutions provider'?
Sam Cheng: We're not only selling furniture to the customer. We are providing the concept and the space planning. We are not doing interior design but rather we input all our furniture knowledge to the designer for them to incorporate better solutions into projects. This is why we offer in-house design tools, CAD services and interactive environments to help designers make the best use of their footprint. So, we become partners with the designer since we want to offer support to our customers. We are not only selling concepts but also total solutions. We have many corporate accounts with longstanding relationships. In some cases, we recommend that our customers re-use furniture. We not only have sales representatives but also project managers to offer our customers stock-taking and layouts. We also do facility management.
SS: The goal here is to focus on what the end user wants. We're all customers in our own right so many times they want new products and other times they have relocation projects. They really want us to solve the problem for them. This could mean re-using some of the existing equipment, refurbishing what they have, adding new products where it makes sense so there's flexibility... adaptability. We're looking for the longevity of the relationship too. We're noticing more and more customers don't want to have multiple suppliers. They want one supplier... best quality products, best brands, best value for money. We try to offer the right cost, the right piece... we want to be much more market driven than some of the things you see now. Any innovation is in direct result to what the market place has fed back to us.
h: What makes Lamex unique in today's international competitive market?
SS: We have a new brand image, new showroom, new brand promise, new growth strategies. Our new promises are to offer fresh, innovative and quality products; deliver best value for money by evaluating effective allocation of investments and provide one-stop solutions. This sums up Lamex's brand. The RCI process was introduced by HNI and has been thoroughly applied to our production cycle and to the company itself. We are looking at creating a brand that's fresh and innovative. The showroom must look trendy but in a relevant way... form and function must co-exist for harmony. Ergonomics is very important. There's no point if it looks good and it isn't comfortable.
h: Do you offer your customers the option of customising furniture pieces?
SC: Yes, sometimes we modify pieces according to the size of the space especially in the case of Hong Kong's typically small footprint areas. At times we would be compromising the quality of our work were we to customise. However, our product selection is fairly comprehensive, allowing customers to choose the product that best fits the environment. h: What do you see as the future direction for your company? SS: To be the best manufacturer and marketer of office service solutions to the marketplace. It's all about anticipating what the A&D clients and customers want and responding to their needs. Fresh designs, innovative products, fast responses, comprehensive service, timely delivery and best value are what we strive for.
