“That abbey illustrates how our history goes a lot further back than 1972. In fact, we have almost 1,000 years of history, as the monastery was founded in 1074”, smiles Cemil Celiker, who is Head of Sales International at Admonter, and who has been working for the company for 17 years already. Cemil Celiker is responsible for the most important markets overseas which are China, Japan, Australia, USA, Canada, Mexico and many more. We ask him first of all to describe Admonter (based in the village of Admont) a little more in depth.

Architects and interior designers
“We provide a variety of wooden products for interior design and decoration. This goes from wood flooring and wood panels, to acoustic products, stair solutions and interior doors, both for the residential and commercial markets. We work a lot with architects and interior designers and can tailor products to their needs.”

“Admonter delivers wood and matching designs and serves as a one-stop, single source place for its customers. We do engineered products, every layer consists of solid wood and that makes us stand out from other companies. Natural wood grown by nature. Same as in nature, our products are built to last a lifetime, it’s the best and most natural material to work with. We use, with the exception of American walnut, only PEFC certified woodspecies from Europe. To which I want to add, we have different techniques (thermo and light smoking) to treat wood and give it further inspiring colours.”

Benelux as interesting growth market
Admonter is very strong on its home markets Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. But how do the figures split up? And what role does the Benelux play in the company’s story?

Cemil Celiker: “Around 30% from our annual turnover is achieved in Austria, the other 70% is separated between the rest of the world. To us, the Benelux is an interesting growth market, in which we mainly focus on Belgium and Luxemburg. We set up a corporation there with a new company (Caro Comfort, coming from the tile business). This was just a few months ago and already now, we see a big demand for high quality products and an increase in the sales numbers, showing that this market has a lot of potential.”

Because this is a special about Austria, we also want to know where Admonter is situated in the entire picture: “In the quality flooring industry we are without a shadow of a doubt top 3. Admonter may not be the biggest in numbers, but for us the most important is to provide our customer the product he actually needs and demands. In the end, to us, customer satisfaction means to make people happy and enjoy their new surroundings for a long time.”

Project business
“Only the best and most suitable items will find their way into prescriptions. Our main target is mid and high end business, in which we can boast several prestigious projects, such as five star hotels, top restaurants, offices, shopping malls, condominium projects,… Some examples? You find us in the 5 star Park Hyatt in Washington DC, the Grand Hyatt in Dubai, the Berchtesgarden Kempinski, the 91 Hannam Project in Seoul, and so on.”

Multibond and Heritage Collection
In conclusion, we want to know what the future has in stall for Admonter. And are they working on astounding new products?

Cemil Celiker: “This year we launched two interesting products of which Multibond with its striped look stands out. It has quite some advantages to what is available on the market, such as faster installation and less weight. Also this year, we extended our range of colours within our well-known wood species ash, spruce, larch and pine and created a new collection with these, the so-called ‘Heritage Collection’. We added interesting textures to this collection: deep or rough brushing and different colours, all in all more than 24 different options.”

www.admonter.com