How is the kitchen market performing today? Are you seeing a significant shift in volumes and demand in a still-challenging real estate environment?

Sales of fitted kitchens fell in 2024, and the decline will continue in 2025 due to a difficult real estate environment and inflation. The French are living in a rather anxious atmosphere and are postponing investments when they can. We are also noting pressure on prices in order to reposition selling prices and offer promotions.

Have cost pressures, budgetary decisions, or economic uncertainties changed the customer-supplier relationship? How is this reflected in your business?

Most companies in the sector are trying to reduce their costs to compensate for the decline in volumes. Many are suspending product development, even if it means embarking on a risky slope of price reductions... In this context, we seek to meet market expectations while continuing to promote innovation and product complements that we believe are most likely to provide sustainable solutions. The question therefore becomes: how can I create added value and differentiation, and how can I increase my customers' average basket?

What levers can we use to differentiate ourselves in a market that is both competitive and demanding?

The differentiation levers provided by Salice are particularly significant. Our goal is to help our partners be even more attentive to their customers' needs in order to improve efficiency. One example is our Atim space-optimization solutions—table extensions, sliding worktops, or fold-away tables integrated into drawers—which represent additional sales with high added value, stand out from the crowd, and are perfectly aligned with real consumer expectations, particularly in urban environments. In our view, the current context is refocusing the market on fundamental marketing: that of concretely responding to real needs.

What are the major trends you are currently observing in terms of decor, colors, textures, and finishes?

We are continuing to adopt a philosophy of combining materials, with an increasing use of natural and sustainable materials, and increasingly refined decors where objects disappear behind large facades. The industrial style, marked by black aluminum frames or dark decor, is gradually giving way to warmer finishes, such as bronze.

With the rise of open spaces and the disappearance of clear separations between kitchen and living room, how do aesthetic requirements influence your product developments?

The development of pocket doors responds to this trend by allowing the kitchen to be hidden from the living room. In this area, we have just presented two major developments: the Exedra Gravity, a pocket door system combining quality of operation and ease of installation, and the Exedra 2, for two folding pocket doors, available in a motorized version and soon in a push version. We also offer our equally innovative Folder range of free-standing folding doors, perfectly suited to new uses.

"Most companies in the sector are trying to reduce their costs to compensate for the decline in volumes."

Environmental issues are now unavoidable. Are eco-design requirements becoming a mandatory requirement in the kitchen industry? And how does your company integrate sustainability criteria into its products?

Our company is 100% European, and all of our products are manufactured in Europe using raw materials from European countries. For us, this is the first concrete element of a coherent ecological approach. We have set up a dedicated department, fully focused on concrete actions in this area, which is at the heart of our priorities. We are convinced that companies have a major responsibility in protecting the environment.

What are your most promising innovations?

Many innovations were presented at the Interzum trade fair in Cologne. I won't single out one in particular, but rather a range of solutions for optimizing space with the Atim range, our ever-more efficient pocket doors, our invisible hinges outside the cabinet, but also inside the cabinet with the Air and Conecta ranges – now available in 180 degrees – and our Excessories range for the dressing room, which is constantly expanding and will soon be available in a champagne finish.

What are the challenges facing the kitchen industry in the next two to three years? And what opportunities can be seized?

Current challenges concern all players in the kitchen industry, facing an increasingly competitive market on a European, and even global, scale. How can we continue to exist in a context of hypercompetition, often facing increasingly powerful competitors with considerable resources to expand? This points to the need to redefine our identity, target our customers more precisely, and offer our own unique, distinctive, and high-value-added solutions. This may seem obvious, but it is a fundamental issue to ensure the sustainability of companies in the sector.

It is also undoubtedly about recreating dreams and desires in a world that is sometimes too limited to its technical or functional functions. So yes, opportunities exist on the market, and we are here to support them.

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