Ask the Expert: Simon Meyer

Tony Cassar:  Welcome to Ask the Expert, Simon.

Simon Meyer:  It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Tony Cassar:  Firstly, Simon, How are your parents and brother doing?

Simon Meyer:  They’re all doing very well. Dad happily retired back in 2011 but Mum is still coming in most days.

Dad is on the board of the BMAA now, my brother Damien is our Sales Director and you can’t keep Mum away! We’re a proper family business here in every sense of the word. Mumzx is starting to slow down at the moment, we’ve got her to take Fridays off and in the New Year she’ll be off on Mondays as well. But her years of experience are still vital in our business. 

She checks all the orders and she’s that backstop in case something gets through that shouldn’t get through. She is constantly on the phone to customers, double checking that their orders reflect what they really want and need. Those years of experience only come after years of doing that job.

Tony Cassar:  What is your official role in the organisation?

Simon Meyer: Managing Director is my title. As a family business, that means my role is everything from making the blinds (a rare occasion these days) to marketing, product and sampling development, and wearing lots of other hats.

Tony Cassar:  What were you doing before entering the window covering business?

Simon Meyer:  I’ve been in the industry all my life but from around 15, in the school holidays, I would go and work and help with assembly of our cedar and basswood venetians. After school, I went to university and did computer science, but this wasn’t quite my cup of tea. So, I ventured to the UK and worked in the industry over there.

One year in the UK turned into 5.5 years in total, including a short trip back home after getting deported for overstaying my working holiday visa. Thankfully, I managed to get back in on a training visa and continued working in the window coverings industry. It was a good time.

Tony Cassar:  Who did you work for in the UK? 

Simon Meyer:  There was a company called Arding Marketing, a small business that punched well above its weight. It was an agency style business that represented a lot of the larger fabric, machinery and component manufacturers. We worked with European companies, such as some of the bigger fabric mills, and promoted their products directly into the UK. We worked with the likes of Hillary’s, Eclipse, AMO and Decora. They were the sorts of companies that were big enough to buy directly from the mills, buying large volumes. I would go and sell them fabrics, components, and manufacturing machinery. 

As the business developed, we started to import more products out of Asia. We would be shipping containers of fabric and ready-made blinds that would then be cut to size in the UK. It was an agency model so we would earn about 10%.

Tony Cassar:  What is the biggest difference between the UK market and the Australian market in the window coverings industry?

Simon Meyer:  They work with very small windows over there. From memory 1200mm was the most popular window width! I’m of the belief that their trends follow our trends with a lag of about five to seven years. As their market develops and architectural styles change, their market follows ours. 

I went over in the early 2000s and they were just at the start of a timber venetian boom. In Australia, the market for timber venetians was booming in the nineties. In the UK it was booming in the 2000s. Similarly, their market is currently on the upward curve for shutters while our market is at mature levels. 

The shutter market is maturing and in its growth phase in the UK, while we are a long way down the line when it comes to shutters in our industry. Sunscreen blinds have been very popular in Australia since the late eighties when Silent Gliss brought out a screen roller blind and people wanted to see out but maintain UV protection and daytime privacy. In Australia, it started as a commercial product and then moved into the residential markets. While I was in the UK, the sunscreen market was in its infancy in the commercial space. It’s now moving into the residential market as their windows and architecture slowly changing to big windows that suit a screen style product. 

Tony Cassar:  In a room, they would use several types of blind and different colours and patterns. In Australia you wouldn’t really do that.

Simon Meyer:  They’ve got a lot more flair for colours over there. Because it’s so grey outside, they need to add a bit of interest onto their windows, so, creating something interesting is very popular. 

Tony Cassar:  What do you think you would have done if you hadn’t joined the window covering industry?

Simon Meyer:  If I had my time again, I would have enjoyed getting my teeth into a marketing degree. I do a lot of the marketing in our business these days. I really enjoy getting my teeth stuck into the brochure work, product development, website work, and all of our consumer facing output. 

Tony Cassar: The business has been operating for 35 years?

Simon Meyer:  Yes about 35 years ago, in 1987, the old man started a business with a handshake agreement with Terry Bayliss. He started what at the time was called ‘Le Blinde’. Dad was a furniture retailer at the time, but his window covering division was growing and he saw a future there. 

Terry wanted to focus on Silent Gliss at that stage, Dad, being Terry’s biggest customer in the woven timber product, said, “If you’re getting out of it, I’ll buy the business.” So, with a handshake agreement crossing Parramatta Road in Camperdown, Dad bought the manufacturing side of the French woven timber product. That’s all he wanted to manufacture; he just wanted to be making woven timber products and distribute it throughout all of Australia. But he quickly realised that he was not going to make the business model out of just making one product. So then came timber venetians, roller blinds, it just grew from there.

We have partners or dealers throughout every state of Australia. We also export to New Zealand and have an agent over there where we export products on a weekly basis. We are always speaking to companies or countries around the world.  At the moment I’m working with a company in the United States and a customer wants to get our natural weaves shipped over to Dubai. We have sold products into Singapore and done commercial hotel fit-outs with our natural weave products in Hong Kong. We have also shipped products over to South Africa. We have done a fair bit of exporting of our exclusive products, which allows our customers to set themselves apart. 

Tony Cassar:  What are your greatest challenges within the business at the moment?

Simon Meyer:  I think staffing is the biggest challenge for us, and I think that is probably the biggest challenge for our industry moving forward, keeping Australian Made products strong. Getting reliable staff to manufacture them is our biggest concern moving forward. We’re always constantly training staff to be multi-skilled in different areas. We’re pretty lucky here, as we’ve got a lot of staff who have been with us for 20+ years. We’ve got a great team.

A lot of products that we manufacture require unique skill sets and experience. I am proud to say that around 75% of our staff have been with us for more than 10 years. It’s difficult to find good staff in our small industry. Making a roller blind is relatively straightforward, but there are many other tasks that require skill and experience, such as sewing romans or curtains or custom spray painting our cedar venetians – anything that requires a sewing machine to operate or to manufacture. It’s a dying art in Australia.

Tony Cassar:  Simon, what range of blinds do you offer?

Simon Meyer: There’s not much we don’t offer. We’ve partnered with likeminded businesses, mainly in Germany, in the last five to 10 years.

We also partnered with Silent Gliss in the UK. We are now the wholesale manufacturing partner for Silent Gliss in Australia since Silent Gliss Australia shut down in April 2019. Silent Gliss offers exceptional quality products including curtain tracks, roller blinds and Winter Garden skylight blinds.

We also make roller blinds, romans, the natural weave products, and we import our Simply Cell Honeycomb solution out of Germany. We have the largest range of folding arm awnings and retractable roof systems that we bring in from Germany from Weinor.

We still custom paint cedar venetians. We wear the cap for being the last company in Australia that is still out there custom painting cedar venetians. Custom painted cedar venetians can take anywhere between 20-30 working days. Each individual slat is sprayed, sanded and its over spray taken off and more, so each slat goes through about six different processes before it makes it into a blind.

We buy the cedar raw, punch the slats and then custom paint it to any colour. We can use any Dulux colour, half strength, quarter strength, duck egg blue, whatever you want.

Tony Cassar: How successful has exhibiting at the BMAA Expo been for you? What advice could you give someone who is contemplating exhibiting?

Simon Meyer:  For us, it’s a very big expense. We’re a small family business and the cost of the product we produce is quite high. So, by the time we bring in five or six awnings and roof systems, plus a whole bunch of similar products from our German partners and then the locally made products – everything on our stand was motorised – the cost was probably in excess of $200,000. 

You can put a few reps on the road for that cost, but admittedly, it’s only once every three years. So, I suppose you can amortise the costs over that period. I love being able to see all our customers in one room for three days. I don’t personally get out on the road very much, so it’s good to be able to be in front of our customers and see them all in the one space for them to be able to see our full range of products.

It is hard to quantify those shows. We have seen good growth over the years that we have exhibited. However, sometimes we may not get a customer on board straight away because we manufacture quite unique products that take some product knowledge and confidence to sell. 

Tony Cassar:  You advertise in the Window Furnishing Australia magazine. What type of response do you receive?

Simon Meyer: James and the team at WFA have helped our industry to take a big leap forward. The industry needed a voice and I think James has given our industry a voice to be able to get product out into the market. We see good results from our industry reading the magazine and calling us to buy our products. I think that as long as people keep reading the magazine we’ll keep advertising it. 

Tony Cassar: What other type of promotional activity do you do, Simon?

Simon Meyer:  Our online presence has expanded. We have two websites; one for Blinds by Peter Meyer and one for Weinor Australia. We do online advertising, SEO marketing, and a bit of glossy magazine advertising to generate leads for our sales team.

For our dealers we typically get between 10 and 15 leads a day, depending on the time of year. We pass these leads on to our trusted dealers who have the products and sampling on display as well as the experience, and are trained in our product range. We want to ensure that the end consumers looking for our product get the best experience possible.

We recently invested during Covid19 in a virtual showroom. You can click on our website and click on the virtual tour. We made somewhere between 70-80 videos of every single product in operation. That was a major undertaking but we can easily show a dealer or end customer our products in action from anywhere in the world. 

Tony Cassar:  Is it important to have a physical showroom?

Simon Meyer:  I think it’s pretty important for our products.

The products that we sell look great in swatch books, but people still don’t quite understand how it’s going to look when it’s installed. Saying that, we have a lot of customers that are out there quite happily selling our products out of a mobile showroom.

Tony Cassar:  Simon, what challenges do you believe the window covering industry faces?

Simon Meyer: I think skilled labour is my main priority. Inflation is hitting everyone and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. The cost of living affects all of our staff and therefore our cost of manufacturing increases. So I think our labour costs are quite high in comparison to the rest of the world already.

Tony Cassar:  The DIY sector has grown over the last few years. What has been your experience over this time, Simon?

Simon Meyer: We don’t sell to end consumers. The cheaper products, such as a roller blind is more likely to be bought online. This is only based on my experience, but people may struggle to sell $20,000 worth of shutters online. Someone who’s going to go and spend $20,000 really wants to be comfortable that they’ve measured correctly and they’re going to install it correctly with a professional that knows what they’re doing and can offer warranty on the product and the installation. 

Tony Cassar:  Simon, what do you consider your greatest achievements throughout your career?

Simon Meyer: I think as a family business we punch above our weight. We’re still a small family business but we have partnered with some great European companies such as Silent Gliss and Weinor. Those guys trust us to represent their products in Australia as well as our own brand.

I think Dad started an amazing business with a great trusted brand and I think we’ve managed to expanded on that.

Tony Cassar:  Who has been the greatest influence in your life?

Simon Meyer:  Dad has been a big influence. We have changed the business model a little bit since he “retired”, but he still oversees every invoice that goes through our company. He is still checking daily that things are tracking in the right direction. Both Mum and Dad have had a big influence on both my brother Damien and my lives.

We used to race karts together and used to go away racing up to 40 weekends a year. We spent a lot of time together as a family. 

Dad wanted a sport that took him away from work because at the time he had a retail business and was working seven days a week. So, he chose a sport that meant we travelled on weekends. We all travelled together, Dad, Mum, Damien and me. 

We’ve done trips to Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and even Tasmania. At one stage, we would probably have been on the road 40 weekends a year. So, you had to have a business that would be able to cope with working Monday to Friday. So, I think they’ve set me up with the right attitude.

Simon Meyer:   Another person that has had a very big influence on my growth as a person in our industry would be a gentleman by the name of Gerald Arding who owned Arding Marketing in the UK. When I left Australia in 2000, I was 20 and turned 21 over in the UK.

Dad has known Gerald since they were in their thirties, so when the job opportunity came up in the UK, Dad said if you’re going to stay in the family business, you’ll only have blinkers on if you don’t take this job.

He suggested the same to Damien when he started in the industry. Damien worked for Silent Gliss with Terry Bayliss. We both had experience outside our own family business in another company still within the window furnishings industry. 

Gerald taught me that you don’t achieve anything without hard work. He taught me the meaning of hard work, very long days working with clients and even longer nights networking and developing relationships with them. It would be nothing for me to be up at three in the morning, driving to Scotland for a nine o’clock appointment and then traveling down the country to get back home later that night, stopping for appointments along the way. They were long hours but I enjoyed doing it and enjoyed my time over there.

Tony Cassar:  Tell me about the rest of your family.

Simon Meyer:  I’ve got three daughters, a wife, and a dog. We’ve just finished building a house. It’s a very busy life at the moment. Negotiating around three children is rather busy and I couldn’t do it without Cyn, my beautiful wife. She is my rock and helps organise our lives while still working full-time herself.

Tony Cassar:  You’ve told us about your early karting days, but I gather you’re still racing! Tell us more about your motor car racing.

Simon Meyer: Damien and I race historic sports cars in a category called Group S, which is historic sports cars from the ‘50s to the late ‘80s. We race against Porsches, Mustangs, Lotus Super Sevens and other sport cars. We’re in a 1969-1970 MG Midget, a 1.3L light and nimble car. We punch well above our weight.

Damien and I have grown up in motorsport. That’s what the family sport was as we were growing up. We were both national and state champions in karting at various times. It’s in the blood. Cyn and the kids now come out to the race track and they love helping clean the cars and things like that. 

Mum and Dad still come out and they love watching Damien and me. There’s a fair bit of brotherly rivalry between us. That’s a beautiful thing.

Tony Cassar: What does the future look like for Blinds by Peter Meyer and you?

Simon Meyer:  We want to continue expanding our product range and our customer base. I’d love to look at exporting some more of our products to different regions. That’s something that is on the cards. 

We’ll be off to R+T Stuttgart to find some new fabrics because we’re developing a new Signature Collection which is our main fabric range for rollers, romans and panel blinds. The Signature Collection is due for a revamp as it’s four or five years old now, so we’re hoping to find some lovely new fabrics to bring into the range.

We also want to keep manufacturing in Australia and keep Australian manufacturing strong! 

Tony Cassar:  Thank you Simon for being our Ask the Expert for this issue. 

Simon Meyer:  Thank you Tony, I appreciate being honoured with the expert status.