Ladies and Gentlemen
dear industry colleagues,
we are almost at the end of a complex and difficult year. Actually, we wanted to have already forgotten the corona-related sales roller coaster and really everyone we spoke to longed for the 2019 “normality”. But we are still a long way from that in 2022: Corona continues to cause uncertainties with new variants and - what hardly anyone would have thought possible - a war on European soil will again shake our world, which has only just been laboriously stabilized. Russia is blackmailing the world with its fossil fuels, thus triggering inflation that, for the first time, is not only costing people perceived prosperity, but also costing them real prosperity.
The home improvement industry is also feeling the effects: Investive projects are being postponed and people turn the euro three times before it wanders over the physical or virtual counter. Of course, as an industry, we are traditionally quite pragmatic - in such a situation we can help people with change and the necessary adjustment measures. We can "heat & ventilate properly" and "light properly" and "insulate properly" and have the right products for this, which we combine with advice and training.
Trade and industry together make the home comforting and worth living in. In order to be able to do that, everything has to be right for us too, from the right sourcing/purchasing, the right order time, logistics that cushion the unexpected. And we have to position ourselves as friendly, empathetic advisors.
How we do this? We will analyze this at this congress, discuss it and listen to new ideas. With numbers specialists as well as with political experts, with practitioners as well as with visionaries.
And of course we also have a lot to talk about and tell "between us", after all we haven't seen each other for a long time. And this time there are more topics than ever before!
We are very pleased that this year this is possible again in person. We are also proud and grateful that you are all there and that you are strengthening the "industry family" internally and externally.
So all the more heartfelt: Welcome to Bonn!
Peter Tepass, spokesman for the BHB board, member of the board of OBI Group Holding SE & Co. KG
dr Peter O. Wüst, General Manager, BHB e.V.