“Our objective within the Spanish market is to strengthen as specialists in arts material” | Key4Communications |

ColArt, a multinational company with headquarters in London which manages a range of brands related with Arts & Creativity, counts with a filial in Spain, ColArt Ibérica, which manages the Spanish and Portuguese market. With its brands Lefranc Escolar and Snazaroo, the company has got presence in the Toy and Party sector, where it looks for strengthen as specialist and get to new distribution channels. In this interview, Vicente Chicote, commercial director for Iberia of ColArt, details the objective of the Spanish filial of ColArt. 

- ColArt Ibérica is the filial of the multinational ColArt in Spain. ¿How do you manage the business in our market?

- ColArt Ibérica started its way as an independent filial in 2012, and was previously operating through a distributor, establishing its offices in Madrid.
    We are a commercial and marketing filial, and we keep in our central offices in Leman (France) all our invoicing services, customers services, factory and warehouse. Our current staffs in Iberia are made up by eight people and we cover the distribution in Spain and Portugal.

- Can you detail us the speciality of the company and the brands which made up it?
- ColArt is among the world’s leaders in terms of distribution of arts materials, and some of its brands are commercialized since the XVIII century and, currently, they continue to be leaders in its categories for its quality, innovation and tradition.
    Apart from the Arts market, we have got presence in the Toys/Party sector with our brand Snazaroo of Makeup and the educational sector with our brand Lefranc Escolar. To sum up, we commercialize the brands Winsor&Newton, Lefranc&Vourgeois, Liquitex, Conte, Reeves, Snazaroo and we are exclusive distributors of Arches.

- Which objectives have you determined for the Spanish market?
- Our objective within the Spanish market is to strengthen as specialists in the arts material distribution and introduce products of initiation to arts in new channels such as bookstores, toy stores and shopping malls. Regarding to the makeup brand Snazaroo, we want to introduce it to the toy sector, in party stores and small stationery stores and bookstores.
    On its behalf, our scholar brand, Lefranc, is already present in some big stores in the stationery departments, and we have determined the objective of introducing it in the scholar distribution channels.

- One of the main priorities is to introduce the brand Snazaroo in the toy channel ¿Which initiatives are you carrying out?
- Our brand Snazaroo has got presence in the Spanish market thanks especially to party distributors and the stationery department.
    We thought that makeup is totally perceived as a toy by the final consumer and with this objective we are developing different actions in order to make our products and our brand Snazaroo to be sensed as a toy generator of toy experiences, entertainment and creativity.

- ¿How is toy sector is changing according to your point of view? ¿Which expectation has it got for 2017?
- After some days of difficulties for the toy sector, it is recovering in a good way and customers search not only a good and quality product, but also a product which provides them with a game experience, fun and learning; I think that manufacturers are understanding this trend and if we know how to adapt that, the learning will be sharp in the next few years.
    In this line we are working with our brand Snazaroo and Lefranc Escolar, that’s why we are quite positive in relation with the behaviour of our brands in the toy sector during the next few years.

- Do you want to add some comment?
- I want to express thanks to Juguetes b2b for the opportunity of presenting ColArt and its brands to the toy and party sector. I think that for our experience and the quality of our brands, we have a gap to occupy in this market.
I would like to wish you all a profitable Christmas Campaign 2016/2017