Adrien&fils: keeping your head above water by diversifying your lines of business
Keeping your head above water by diversifying your lines of business
How did Marc Adrien, head of the family-owned moving company Adrien & Fils, cope with the COVID-19 shock wave? How are he and his teams dealing with the post-pandemic world?? What are the new challenges facing these 90-year-old moving professionals?
Marc Adrien opens up with no holds barred.
Adrien & fils is a family story that is as long as an endless list of credits!
It all began back in 1930s when Guillaume Adrien, a grocer and coal merchant, took advantage of his large van to help one or another Etterbeek resident to move house… The business gradually flourished.
It was to prosper even so with the arrival of Guillaume’s son, André. Adrien & Fils was founded in the 1950s, and has continued to modernize ever since, with the creation of SOS Pulley (the forerunner of Lift Service) in the 1960s, a furniture storage facility in the 1980s, and international growth since 2000…
Today it is the third generation (Marc Adrien), joined by the fourth, is at the helm of a company that is constantly expanding its offer.
The Adrien group brings together several family businesses, including Adrien & Fils movers, which handles no less fewer than 2,000 private and professional moving assignments per year! “This puts us among the leaders in the sector,” says Marc Adrien with satisfaction.
For international moves, the group has created the company Nord Sud, which organizes all such operations to Europe. “From the North Sea to the Mediterranean”: traffic to France has become their strong point, as the group has a branch in Grasse, in the Province-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region…
In addition to Adrien & Sons, Adrien Logistique is also active in the management of furniture storage facilities for private individuals and professionals, and Adrien Self-Storage offers storage spaces in Overijse and Brussels. So much for introductions.
Never put all your eggs in one basket
COVID-19, a fatal grain of sand! “There is no denying it: the entire transport sector has been hit hard by the crisis.
We were at a complete standstill for two months, as many real estate transactions were stopped in their tracks, which had a fairly heavy impact on the moving sector, and still does!
Fortunately, our furniture storage and warehousing activities were maintained, which enabled Adrien & Fils to remain financially stable,” Marc Adrien analyses with implacable lucidity.
A different offer
To keep its head above water, Adrien & Fils will continue to develop a strong synergy between the initial moving activity and the new lines of business… ” The Etterbeek self-storage facility is at saturation point, but we can still increase the number of boxes available in Overijse.
We are working on this, while continuing to focus on our strengths: the quality of the offer, the security of the storage and our perfectly competitive prices… Self-storage also appeals to start-ups and SMEs, because we also manage the logistics of the storage, i.e. the reception of deliveries and the dispatch of such and such items, goods, office furniture, to customers, at their request, via DHL, for example.
We are the only ones on the Belgian market who offer this formula! ”
What about tomorrow? You have to have a solid acumen and be well advised
The prospects for the moving sector are not good, but the prospects for the real estate sector are, so you have to be able to juggle the two! “That is why we called on ODB to restructure the group into a holding company at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021,” says Marc Adrien, who is comforted with the support that ODB provides to Adrien & Fils in terms of accounting, tax, financial and legal expertise.
????In conclusion, whatever the nature of the crisis, to keep your company afloat, you will need to be creative, without being a kamikaze! ODB’s experts are always on hand to advise you. Contact us.
????????Your contact: Olivier Bottequin: +32 475 27 76 76 , ob@odb.be
Keen to have the freedom to devote all your energy to building or developing your business? The experts at ODB are your allies in the fast-moving economy in which we live.
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