FAST TRADE FRANCE, TRADITION AND DIGITAL FOOTPRINT

France is at the heart of Europe but also in the geographical centre of Fast Trade, which covers the entire EMEA market with its logistics and distribution offices but also sees beyond the Alps as an important point of reference for its business. In fact, the new business unit of the Fontana firm is based in the Paris region of France, with offices and a warehouse, as well as a plant in Bourogne, Alsace, strategically located between Switzerland and Germany. Heading up French operations is Christian Lugarà, country manager of Fast Trade France for the last few months, but with extensive experience in a large screws company. “In Bourogne, in an area of 15,000 square metres, we have a logistics platform that allows us to respond very quickly to the needs of all Fast Trade branches. Here we deal specifically with fasteners for customers from the industrial world, also for specialist products, and for the world of distribution, i.e. wholesale, industrial hardware…”.
A service with high added value that responds to Fast Trade’s mission to qualify as a leader in fixing solutions at the EMEA market level, and which is the continuation of a path undertaken a while ago: like Fontana, which started its history in Italy, in Veduggio, 68 years ago but also like GFD, a historical and well-known French organisation, a giant of fasteners distribution whose origins date back to the late 18th century and which in the 2000s merged with Fontana Gruppo.
Lugarà comments: “Our great tradition certainly represents a beacon, but our team today draws a lot of motivation and enthusiasm from current and future projects based on further consolidation of the plant abroad: we are in constant contact with other branches to coordinate work, ideas, development plans and to share information that urges us to ensure a real time to market to customers. Our challenge is precisely aimed at achieving uniformity of action, which is also useful in obtaining significant economies of scale”.
The future? “The development of customer relationships through the e-commerce portal. Many people, in fact, do not associate the concept of innovation with a traditional product like a screw; on the contrary, in addition to being the result of much research on materials, shapes and characteristics designed to ensure increasing quality, the purchasing and sales system can also benefit from new technological frontiers. For this reason, Fast Trade has outlined a roadmap that will lead us to talk more and more with our customers in a simple and fast way through the potential of the web“.