In an exclusive interview with Ella Cheetham, director, Europa Engineering Group, and managing director, Lifting Gear Products and PlumAlti, she says these products saturate the online space and ‘it is time we start to tackle the marketing imbalance with premium equipment, that brings confidence to the end user’.
“We want to initiate a platform that is about the customer and the brand, supporting consumers to make the right choice instead of using online sales tactics to pressure them into choosing the cheapest,” said Cheetham.
“We hope to challenge other issues such as waste reduction, customer technical support, and protecting British manufacturing.”
As such, the company has appointed Charles Middleton, head of Digital, LiftingGearProducts.com to help take it into the digital space.
“We want to take our service, technical excellence and innovation, into the online market. We realised since the Covid-19 pandemic, buyers’ habits are transitioning into the online space and users are buying more things through e-commerce platforms and we needed to be a part of that,” added Cheetham.
“We promote industrial and mechanical handling equipment and promote our existing partnerships, focused mainly on UK manufacturing lifting equipment, but also work with key players such as William Hackett, Tiger Lifting UK and The Crosby Group and we understand the importance of bringing innovation into a traditional engineering space. Our key partners need forward-thinking distributors as part of the business community.
“We feel there are lots of companies pushing cheap unregulated, unsafe products into the UK market, which is not driven by safety or its environmental impact but simply based on profit and margin so we want to tackle those products that saturate the online space and replace them with premium equipment to give confidence back to the end user.
“We don’t want to overload our clients with a myriad of options but focus on giving the buyer a clear and simple choice based on their technical requirement and safety. We recognise that the volume that sits around cheap products means there is high waste around lifting equipment, being discarded.
“We want to offer products that with come with a 6-monthly LOLER reminder, through our site, where we will send them a prompt email to book equipment in to increase the lifespan of their product and which in turn reduces the amount of equipment that gets scrapped and thrown away. Supporting our customers to make the right choice.”
The e-commerce site https://www.liftinggearproducts.com went live three weeks ago and is in the process of adding more brands, expanding the industrial equipment sector.
Cheetham added the feedback it has received so far has been very positive because the fact that their clients have exclusivity around certain areas gives them the confidence about what they are pushing to market as well.