Luc Tack from Picanol Group | Forging Ahead Amidst A Pandemic

Good morning, Nicole, and thank you for bringing me on. Good morning. So, Picanol has been around since 1936.

Oh, I'm happy to do so, Nicole. So, I think Picanol, we have the big strength that we have a very long history. We started our company in 1936, now more than 80 years ago. Over that period, we have been investing a tremendous amount in research and development, so that we can have the highest technology into the market. Today, Picanol is the world leader for weaving machines, and this is mainly because we are very strong in two areas: we are the only company in the world being so strong in both airjet machines and rapier machines. This very strong development we combine with a very high service for our customers. We have a worldwide service organization, and in every country where we supply our machines, we have local technicians speaking the local language, supporting the customers on the aftermarket, so that after the investment they have the highest return from their machines. This is why we have in our tagline 'Let's grow together.' It's about helping our customer to grow, and at the same time we grow with the customer. I think we have also been pioneering with electronics. In 1978, we were the first one to introduce electronic weaving machines. The same happened with the digitalization. We also embraced the digitalization many years ago, and our machines are Industry 4.0 proof for many years now. So, today in this pandemic, this has proven to be an asset for Picanol. This has helped us in even serving our customers better. Nicole, yes.

Well, Nicole, as every company, you know, the pandemic caught us by surprise, and so we had to put the focus first on all our people. This was our main concern: how do we keep all our colleagues safe, how do we keep our customers safe when visiting, how to arrange that? So, therefore we had to shut down the plant and we had to reorganize the plant completely to make sure we had social distancing. Immediately, we also started the development of a device which is giving an alarm when people are getting too close. We developed this jointly with another company in Belgium, and today in our assembly lines people are wearing devices which are giving an alarm when people are getting too closely to each other. At the same time, we said, 'Okay, we were already on the path of digitalization, but this really gave an extra boost to that program.' Because once we had taken care of the safety, then we said, 'Okay, let's now look at the opportunities.' For instance, in the offices, we had to move away all the closets with the paperwork because we had to move the offices further away, and this way we did away with all the paperwork, and we are now fully digitalized within the company into a paperless company. I think this was a big advantage. Also, in the past we invested very heavily in visiting our customers, so we know the customers very well. We immediately embraced the video technology to keep the meetings going with the customers through the video, and this has helped us to maintain a very strong contact with the customers, to keep helping them through the difficulties also as they had to reorganize their plants through our video meetings. And the video meetings went very well because we know the customers very well. Of course, we are looking very much forward to the future where we will again be able to have more person-to-person meetings, because this is also very important.

Well, in audience of helping the community, we also found out that the schools were short of PCs, so we went faster in renewing our laptops, and we gave our laptops away to the local community for the children, so that they could have electronic access to their teachers. Also, when organizing the schools, we gave away signage stickers for the schools, for the hospitals, so that they could use and also get organized very well. We thought it was also our responsibility to help the community as soon as we were back on our feet, and this gave us a lot of joy and fulfillment here at Picanol.

Oh, I think we are really learning the advantages of the online presence, and what you would have learned over the next five years, now we learned in three, four months. And this goes in different areas: the online follow-up of machines, the data capture that we're getting from the machines. We are so fortunate that since we are already producing according to Industry 4.0 for a few years, that we have all these data into these machines, and analyzing these data and helping our customers to analyze this data through the digital has been a huge step forward and where we still see further growth for our customers. At the same time, also the digital presentations of machines is what we do. We will be launching our first webinar launch of a new machine, our new terry loom machine, on September the 17th, and this will also help us to bring the product faster to the market since we have no ways of showing the machine through visits through the factory, etcetera.

Oh, Nicole, I think both of them will be very complementary going forward, and this is what we're learning. So, over the past years, we saw some small shows mushrooming, local shows, and we think these will disappear because this can easily be replaced by the new tools that we have, the webinars that we are organizing, the virtual presentations. Having said that, we still feel a very strong need for events like ITMA, a well-organized show, a very large show where the whole textile chain will be shown, and I think these events will be very complementary and very necessary and important to the industry. I'm personally a very big fan of ITMA because it is the best show. We always have because all the customers are coming from all over the world to the show, and they can really feel and see the machines, we can have the personal contact, and while they come from our weaving machines, they can also look at the other machines that they need for their manufacturing process. So to summarize the answer, Nicole, I believe it will be an 'and' – digital and also the shows. Wonderful.

Thank you, wonderful, thank you.