Being close to our customers: it isn’t an idle promise!

The recent global lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is clear proof of the importance of having local presence and ensuring we are close to our customers. With borders closed and air travel shut down, service activities are basically impossible to deliver if you don’t have experts strategically positioned throughout the world.

This deliberate choice was made by Picanol not just recently but several decades ago. We heavily invested in building service centers in all of the important textile regions in the world. Now more than ever before, this is really paying off for our customers. Most of our technicians are local people, well-trained and, as we like to say: “just a phone call away”. Put simply, we don’t have to fly any of them in from overseas to provide assistance to our customers. Of course, in light of COVID-19, when assisting customers nowadays, our technicians take all of the necessary health measures such as social distancing, the use of a face mask, disinfection, etc.

Our first local service and sales organization was Picanol of America, established in the US as far back as the 1960s. This formed the bridgehead for servicing North and Central America. From there, Picanol China followed and since then we have created Sales & Service centers in Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and Turkey. Meanwhile, in other significant textile regions, we are able to deploy dedicated Picanol service engineers in close cooperation with our agents.

This means that in total approximately 150 technicians made up of more than 30 different nationalities are on standby to help our customers. They are well-versed in the local customs, they speak the local languages, and they know their counterparts at all of the mills on a personal level. They are also familiar with the functioning of each and every weaving shed in their region and they come to our headquarters in Belgium at least once every year for an in-depth training program on the latest technological evolutions of our weaving machines.

In case you need our assistance, please contact your local service contact.