09.04.2025
How do Bavarian SMEs implement the strategic approach of "customer centricity"?
In practical company portraits, we show how companies consistently place the customer at the center of their activities - including Schüller Möbelwerk. This best practice shows how customer centricity contributes to entrepreneurial success.
Interview with Markus Schüller: Customer centricity at Schüller Möbelwerk
Schüller Möbelwerk KG, a traditional family business from Herrieden in Middle Franconia, was founded in 1966 by Otto Schüller. The Schüller family began their passion for kitchens with the idea of producing kitchen buffets. Today, the company is managed by Markus Schüller as CEO, Max Heller as COO and Manfred Niederauer as CFO. Other family members also hold positions of responsibility.
With 2,250 employees, including around 120 trainees in 15 different professions, Schüller Möbelwerk KG manufactures 170,000 individual fitted kitchens for the German and European market every year - this corresponds to around 760 kitchens per production day.
Markus Schüller, CEO at Schüller Möbelwerk, told us in an interview how the focus on the customer is practiced in his company.
"Suggestions often come from the everyday lives of our retail partners. We are happy to take up these ideas and adapt them to our industrial production in order to balance quality, price and design. This keeps us innovative and close to the needs of our customers."
Markus Schüller
CEO at Schüller Möbelwerk KG
What strategic goals have you set for your company?
Markus Schüller: We have two strategic goals: Growth and sustainability.
Competition has become tougher. In 2017, we massively exceeded our capacity limits. We decided to stay in Herrieden and invest heavily there.
Growth requires continuity and stable customer relationships. We have doubled our turnover in each of the last two decades. The number of employees has developed positively in parallel. We have had growing pains.
Sustainability is in our DNA. We are committed to the next generation. Sustainability is about ecology and economy. It needs both.
Examples include our company roof with one of the largest rooftop photovoltaic systems in Bavaria, the use of a long truck for greater transport efficiency and water-based paints instead of chemical ones. Our aim is to eliminate waste - for our customers, for us and for the environment.
What does customer centricity mean at Schüller?
Markus Schüller: For us, customer centricity means "thinking from the market". We coined this term 20 years ago with an advertising agency. Our direct customer is the furniture trade and kitchen specialists. At the same time, we always think about the end customer. The requirements of a single person's apartment are different to those of a family home - the space requirements for tiny houses or terraced houses vary just as much.
A kitchen has an average lifespan of 15 to 20 years, so it's a rare purchase. That's why we offer our retail partners the best support. Our proximity to the people in the trade is important to us. We aim to have the best sales team.
From the development of new products to service improvements: Where and how do you involve your customers here?
Markus Schüller: We work with two product lines: Our quality brand Schüller in the mid-market segment and our premium brand next125 for a design-oriented target group, inspired by the Bauhaus style. We consistently support both brands from an end customer perspective so that our retail partners can reach their customers in the best possible way.
A good example of this is our cooperation with Pritzker Prize winner Francis Kéré, who was born in Burkina Faso and now has his architectural office in Berlin. There, we integrated our kitchen into a wooden construction, a pavilion, with a central fireplace, bringing people together in a natural way. With such collaborations, we support our customers in staging kitchens as a central living space.
Suggestions often come from the everyday lives of our retail partners. One example: a 120 cm wide cabinet in which the sink and waste system are combined for greater flexibility and ease of assembly. We are happy to take up these ideas and adapt them to our industrial production in order to balance quality, price and design. This keeps us innovative and close to the needs of our customers.
Another focus of innovation: our data quality. Precise data is the basis of our product quality. Our retail partners work with planning systems and the better we provide them with up-to-date data, the smoother the sales and ordering process runs for everyone involved. That is why we have developed a system for electronic data exchange that carries out plausibility checks in real time and provides feedback on possible collisions or improvements within seconds.
In this way, we reduce sources of error, provide concrete answers quickly and ensure that electrical appliances fit perfectly into our furniture. In the future, we will use AI tools to analyze orders even faster and more reliably. This will help us to further improve our consulting and ordering process, which will benefit our customers, end customers and us in equal measure.
What role do existing customers play and what role do new customers play for your business?
Markus Schüller: Existing customers are a reliable foundation. We maintain close relationships and invest in quality and service in order to continue to grow together.
At the same time, we are focusing on new customers, including in new markets such as Spain and the USA. The USA is the largest furniture market in the world - a great opportunity, but also a challenge because production and sales structures are different there. We are also active in the project business in Asia, particularly China.
Our aim is to be better than the competition in all these markets by harmonizing quality, price and design. This is how we ensure sustainable growth. This is only possible with customer focus and innovation.
What visions and plans do you have for the future of your company and how do you see your industry developing over the next five to ten years?
Markus Schüller: As an innovative kitchen furniture manufacturer with high quality standards, we want to be the most desirable company in our industry and still remain a family business that spans generations. We feel closely committed to the region, our employees and their families.
The construction industry is currently facing major challenges. New buildings are not where we would like them to be. Every single new build affects the kitchen industry. Despite fluctuations, we are confident. People continue to cook, eat, talk and dance in the kitchen - it remains the central place in the home and is becoming increasingly important.
As far as the next few years are concerned, people in Asia are already discussing robotics in the kitchen. For some, a standardized, automated kitchen could be attractive, while others prefer to cook for themselves and value individual solutions.
Networking and digitalization will also become more important - in the kitchen and when buying: from the automated ordering process to advice in stationary retail. It remains exciting. We often say: change sometimes hurts, but it ensures progress and success.
Successful in the market through customer centricity
We are convinced that companies with a clear focus on the customer are more successful in creating the optimal solution for their
target group. In our opinion, customer centricity is more than just an optimized process - the ideal "customer journey". It is a
company-wide attitude - the customer-centric mindset: We want to maximize added value for our customers. We
focus on long-term customer relationships. We place the "voice of the customer" at the center of everything we do.
As Innovation Management (TIM) at Bayern Innovativ, we show you the path to customer-centric innovation - using selected
company examples. In short portraits of Bavarian SMEs, we shed light on how customer centricity works in practice: from understanding
and defining customer needs to designing products, testing and obtaining feedback.
CEO-Talk Mittelstand „Customer centricity & innovation"
May 15, 2025 | Nuremberg
Making future-proof decisions for your company:
Those who understand their customers can grow sustainably and drive innovation in a targeted manner.
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Get to know innovative approaches for successful strategic decisions based on a customer-centric culture through networking and keynote speeches!
