• President’s statement
• Vision and strategy
• Market
• Operations
  • Market channels
  • B&B TOOLS Markets
  • B&B TOOLS Products
  • B&B TOOLS Services
• Financial development
• Sustainable development
• Competence and responsibility
• History

Products – complete offerings

The Products operating area comprises the Group’s Product Companies and a management and development function. The Product Companies conduct operations within a large number of product areas and provide TOOLS and other selected market channels with industrial consumables and related services.
Products is responsible for processes related to the Group’s offerings. This entails considerable responsibility that includes the management and development of existing and future products and services.
In 2007/2008, Products had revenue of approximately MSEK 4,300. TOOLS currently accounts for slightly more than one third of the Product Companies’ total sales.

Develops product and service offerings

B&B TOOLS’ five Product Companies focus on providing and developing complete solutions for a variety of industrial needs. These solutions include:
• the right product and service (requires knowledge about the market, suppliers, products and applications)
• at the right time (requires first-rate IT and logistics systems)
• with the right knowledge (requires competence and conceptual capability)
• with the right application instructions (requires understanding of the customer’s situation)
• with the right information (places significant requirements on IT solutions)
• on competitive terms (requires an understanding of profitability and efficiency)

Products is responsible for the development of B&B TOOLS’ product and service offerings. This work is based on the needs of industrial customers. Within the framework of this work, continuous efforts are made to achieve economies of scale and increased purchasing power.
Through partnerships with such construction materials dealers as Interpares, Optimera and Byggmakker and with other external market channels, the Product Companies provide parts from the total product range to the construction and real estate sectors and the do-it-yourself market.

Coordinated purchasing

The Group’s purchasing is gradually being coordinated. Products has approximately 40 employees in China (Shanghai) and Taiwan (Taichung). Practical purchasing work includes such aspects as product quality, function, the image of the brand and price. Purchasing work also includes setting requirements and quality control in cooperation with suppliers.

Focus on proprietary product brands

The Group’s total product portfolio is based on two main guidelines:
a. In market niches with world-leading suppliers, we will seek out cooperation with top players.
b. Within selected market niches, we will gradually build an increasingly strong portfolio of proprietary brands.

Work involving proprietary brands has been successful and accounted for 37 percent of the Product Companies’ total sales in 2007/2008.
The brand portfolio is gradually being improved. For example, in 2007, a decision was made to launch Luna as a product brand and, consequently, to integrate six existing product brands into the new profile (thereby replacing six brands with a single brand with significant market weight).

Complete Product 

Complete Product is the Group’s general term for the goal of providing complete solutions that aim to fully meet actual customer needs within defined areas. Understanding the actual needs of the customer is difficult. Creating complete solutions given a certain definition of these needs is also difficult. Accordingly, it is always important to remind ourselves of our aim.
The concept of Complete Product could potentially be limitless, but our focus is placed on comprehensive solutions that reduce the total cost incurred by industrial customers for industrial consumables.
The purchase value per item is often relatively low for industrial consumables, but all of the related costs can easily become substantial. Work that is classified under Complete Product is a highly important part of the Group’s efforts to achieve its vision – First in MRO.

Exports

The largest market for Products is Sweden, followed by Norway and Finland. In recent years, sales outside the Nordic region have increased, primarily in the markets in the Baltic countries and Poland. Export sales are increasingly coordinated. The Product Companies currently conduct their own operations in 12 countries and have sales of proprietary product brands via external distributors in an additional ten countries.