Three questions to Baptiste Reybier
Anna Moldenhauer: The industry has changed significantly in recent years. What is important to you in terms of strategic direction and the company's values for the coming years?
Baptiste Reybier: The environment has sped up. However, our responsibility is not to chase after this pace, but to stay on a clear course. Since taking over the company in 1989, Fermob has been based on a long-term vision of anchoring design as a strategic pillar, continuously innovating, growing internationally and placing sustainability at the heart of its business model. We combine agility with consistency. For us, agility means expanding our territory, particularly in the indoor sector, and responding to changing usage habits. Consistency is reflected in our core values, local production, industrial expertise, creativity and environmental responsibility. Our strategy is based on controlled growth, responsible industrial innovation and a long-term perspective. Agility is necessary, but must never come at the expense of our values.
What sets Fermob apart in terms of design, manufacturing and painting, ensuring that its products will last its customers a lifetime?
Baptiste Reybier: To accompany our customers throughout their lives means developing repairable, durable, reusable and adaptable products. Our metallurgical heritage forms a solid foundation for this. Metal is a traditional material that can be recycled indefinitely and enables the creation of robust, durable products. Eco-design has been firmly established at Fermob for more than thirty years. We consider each product throughout its entire life cycle. To this end, we have developed our own repairability and recyclability indices. Today, 87 per cent of our products are classified as easily repairable, and nearly 95 per cent are fully recyclable. A current example is our "Voulez Vous" indoor sofa. With the help of a life cycle analysis, we were able to reduce its environmental impact by 44 per cent through a lighter structure, bio-based foam and a cover made from 100 per cent recycled material. Our emission-free painting facility, which was introduced back in the 1990s, operates in a closed loop and without solvents. It combines high environmental performance with exceptional durability. With the expansion of our repaint service in Germany in 2025, we are taking a further step by enabling our customers to have their furniture refurbished to industrial standards, extending its service life and embedding colour in a circular economy approach.
What role does sustainability play for Fermob in light of the current crises?
Baptiste Reybier: For us, sustainability is not a cyclical issue, but a structural responsibility. It is both a promise of quality and one of the most important purchasing criteria for our customers. Long before these issues became the focus of public debate, we invested heavily in reducing the environmental impact of our processes. Over the past ten years, we have reduced our water consumption by 62 per cent. We have installed photovoltaic systems at three of our industrial sites, which cover up to 42 per cent of our energy requirements for our own consumption, depending on the location.
