Dear EDiS Friends,
What about taking the time to reflect on our 2019?
A year is a solid length of time – a time where we had achievements, downfalls and huge adventures. Both from a company but also personal perspective. Reflection is important due to that it allows us to look back and think about where we went well, where we can improve, and what we have learnt. It lets us recognize our accomplishments and reflect upon our mistakes. Only by reflecting on these can we leverage them to help us improve ourselves and our upcoming year.
2019 was the year when the environmental debate reached and impacted our business. – Who has not heard about Greta Thunberg, Times’s Person of the Year? We received the first questions about carbon footprint in tenders, asked by customers regarding energy consumptions and origin of products. Isn’t it sad that the risk of losing business and money leads to great activity but also creativity?
Another trend was that the E-commerce took off after several years of rather low activity in our industry sector. This is both a threat but also great potential (Advanced companies as Amazon will not focus on bulk shipments as hoses are) due to that our industry sector is slow in adopting new technology. Lundgrens as a company have already started to adapt and has the last years bought manufacturing companies of special products to avoid the risk of being squeezed out by price and google. I know all other EDiS members are also taking actions in this field and it will be very interesting to follow the activities the next years. Some EDiS members are setting up advanced E-commerce platforms, others move towards manufacturing and some go for services. There is no right or wrong and hopefully we will all be successful with our different ideas and activities.
On behalf of EDiS I would like to thank Robert Bloemers for the efforts of running EDiS the last years and we all wish him best luck with his new life as pensioner. I would also like to thank Hubert Reiff that after a long and successful career decided to retire. Hubert Reiff was one of the founding members of EDiS that early saw the value of interaction on a European level, both from a business but also that meetings on European level enriches us as persons.
EDiS is a ¨small Europe¨ and creates great insight of trends, purchasing, know-how, opportunities and risk. This is something unique and can not be bought due to that we are the content. This was the vision of the founders of EDiS and it is even more important today with the quick changes in the world.
I wish us all great success 2020 with all opportunities and challenges that are laying ahead of us.
