COLOMBIA – The success of Tablemac,  Colombia’s leading board manufacturer, is not only based on the quality of their products or their investment in technology – it is the only MDF manufacturer of the country – but it also depends on its ability to know the market and anticipate its needs. 

That is why the company is currently the leading trendsetter in the Andean region and where their collections are awaited with great expectation. Around their latest collection, Anthology 2015, Carolina Gomez, Marketing Coordinator of Tablemac explains how they carry out this process.

Notifix: In previous conversations you mentioned “The art of knowing your consumer,” can you explain the concept?

Carolina Gómez: When we talk about fashion or trends more than asking yourself how to adapt or interpret a macro trend to a particular product, we must ask ourselves how well we know our consumers.

When we answer these questions: Who is my customer? What is expected from my brand? How do they relate to each other? What affinity there is between the two? Why do they prefer us? We arrive at a clear path to innovate with new products or services and be more likely to succeed with the inclusion of new trends to our market road. And we say that knowing the consumer is an art, because as human beings we are so unpredictable, that sometimes we need a little luck to really decipher consumer behavior.

Notifix: And how is the market deciphered?

Carolina Gómez: In the furniture, architecture and interior design markets, which is what concerns us in this case, the (Colombian) consumer has evolved by leaps and bounds, driven by incoming information, access to iconic brands that are a reference and that in the past were not available in our country, trends that are adopted quickly.

We are now talking about an active and better informed consumer in the category, driven by DIY segment in some cases, by the growth of the industry of custom furniture, architectural and design studios, as proven by the solid performance of the construction industry.

And to answer to our consumer knowledge and relationship with the market we have developed our 2015 Anthology collection. Created based in the “styles of Colombian panel consumers” and the design reflected in each space of that consumer and client of our products.

Notifix: What are those styles detected and how do they translate into the Anthology collection recently launched?

Carolina Gómez: We detected six styles in design that translated into three trends that together bring the best of an entire portfolio, which has its own identity. The first is the Industrial and Masculine style. Modern, urban, simple and with character, as well as minimalist and sober. The second is the Natural and Scandinavian style, where the harmony of the elements flows, in close relation to nature and recycle of materials. It is also simple and functional, a comfortable style. And the third is the New Contemporary style. It is based on contrasts to generate custom, unique spaces.

Tablemac is a brand that reinvents itself to become ever closer to specifiers and its consumers, encouraging the use of particle and fiber boards in home and commercial furnishings.