Ferroforma: who said fear?

Live without doubt difficult times for the industry in general and the hardware sector in particular. They have already three years passed since, in 2008, the onset of a crisis which, it must be atisbó speak, no one on site one imagined that it would last so long. After almost three decades of continuous bonanza we receive to lean as who sees rain, convinced that in a matter of months, at most a crude and long winter, escamparía again, they would return the swallows and retornaríamos to our controlled cruising speed. But it has not happened.

Three years are many years to survive in fallow and worst of all is that great enthusiasm need and not less imagination to be confident that the market again to recover again and reach the levels that in 2007 considered little more than normal and usual. The truth is that, horse 2011, the entire sector of production, manufacture and distribution of hardware is already mired in a serious crisis, from the screws until the locksmith, passing through the hand tool.

But this being so, what can not be accepted is the presumption that any past was better. There are probably new, emerging, newly formed, industrial sectors that by his youth have just tradition, enterprise memory or historical data to devise a minimum comparative panel, but a mature market like the hardware store, whose boundaries overlap with stab industry andtherefore us back without solution of continuity until practically the 16th century, you can collapse at the first round or to succumb to the uncertainties of the market as if they had never before existed.

Precisely the convening of a new edition of Ferroforma is a very good opportunity to remind you that any past tense was not better. And not because back in 1974, coinciding with the opening of the first fair, the generality of the exploitation of the ferreteras industries accounts lived a more difficult than the current situation, but because, paradoxically, in those days of autarky and complacency just anyone was aware of the tsunami that was missing to us above.

We have forgotten, but they were supposedly idyllic times, in which the borders were closed to imports, whole production was sold in advance, foreign competition was null and void and our well low competitiveness, the quantitative value wholesomeness on the qualitativethe term of productivity did not have practical reflection one; concepts today as commodities such as innovation, internationalisation and orientation day customer were under development, and the parameters of sustainability and social responsibility simply did not exist, were to invent. In fact, own implementation was in place of the exhibition in Ferroforma questioned with the Pilgrim idea that it was not necessary. What we want to showcase if we sell all what we do? I.e., timely Corporate Treasury was certainly much more ample time now, but the future was far more black... of having failed to react in time.

But the sector was able to react and did it, precisely from the hands of the - in its beginnings-so maligned and despised Ferroforma. Since then, the biennial Basque of hardware has accompanied the sector on its international staging, has placed us in the world, has reminded us that the market is universal, that competition is not as expensive or as clumsy as it might be interested, that investment is necessary, essential to innovation and the inevitable internationalization.

It is not that things are far more difficult that forty years ago. It is that we have ceased to be solitary llaneros naive Spanish internal market and expedition members aware of the difficulties which in itself are already involves the imperative need to compete in the international arena. And the hardware that forty years later approaching Ferroforma knows this better than anyone else because, otherwise, as it wouldn't be here.

Much has changed the landscape global hardware since 1974. Suffice it to recall that in the course of this time have disappeared as representative in New York and Chicago fairs. At the same time, Bilbao has become along with colony - with whom shares its holding in alternative years - world showcase for the sector. We are in the eye of the hurricane.

On the header of Ferroforma, sector Basque hardware is now more and better prepared than ever before. He knows his own limitations and difficulties, but also its great advantages and competitive strengths. It is aware of their good knowledge to do and no one is aware that the future is not to be cheaper than the competition, but to innovate, serve, seduce and 'live customer', from Alaska to Tasmania. Never before in the history the emerging market was of such a scale. Never before objective opportunities were presented as favourable. Never before the letter and spirit of the Gernikako Arbola of Iparragirre had so much potential screening: "Eman eta zabal zazu munduan frutua". Come on, that it is time to offer and distribute our fruits around the world.

Who said fear?