German luxury bathroom manufacturer Bette has reported an increase in sales in 2020 and confirmed its commitment to sustainability with a new environmental officer and plans to switch its factory to 100% solar energy.
In a UK press briefing, Sven Rensinghoff, head of marketing and product management at Bette in Germany, said that in 2020 Bette grew its turnover by 5% to almost €90 million (£77.5m) compared with 2019.
Rensinghoff added: “Over the past year, we grew a total of around 5% compared to 2019 to almost €90 million of turnover. The German market contributed significantly, with a plus of 10%. Internationally, we lost a little bit because of the Covid situation.” He added that international sales represented around 25% of turnover in 2020.
“For this year in 2021, we are very optimistic and positive, and we started well with a lot of orders and turnover up 7%. Germany and our international markets grew at the same level. Business in many markets is better than in the first part of the pandemic. If we can get our raw materials on the procurement side, this positive trend will go on. We are convinced that end consumers in every market want to spend on their homes and so we are very positive for Bette in general.”
Samantha Lewis, country manager for the UK at Bette, explained how Bette was dealing with the pandemic and how quickly everyone in the UK had adapted and how area sales managers had to change their way of working with retailers completely.
Lewis said: “Bette UK remained operational throughout all of the lockdowns, and it was important to do that for our customers. We had not just the retail side of the business, but there were commercial projects that were still ongoing, and we had to be available to support these.
“We had a strong bounce-back at the end of 2020 and we are very happy that continued into 2021. We did have some concerns about potential Brexit effects, but we planned far ahead for Brexit.”
Bette has been stepping up its environmental commitment and said it intends to have all of its energy produced through solar power in the next year, which means the HQ will not have to buy energy to run the factory. Currently, the factory runs off 60% solar power.
“Sustainability is very important to us, and we appointed a new colleague as a sustainability officer since last year. He is working on all our processes internally and is preparing an annual report, which will be available in the summer,” Rensinghoff explained.
Bette has also released the new shower tile BetteAir, which is pictured. It has a new BetteAnti-Slip Sense coating, that works when the shower tray or bath become wet to create an anti-slip surface.