Brushcom happy with acquisition: ‘It’s good to join forces’
Earlier this month, Favagrossa announced the acquisition of Brushcom. Together, they now form the Brush World Group. Both companies were present at the German UNITI expo last week. A good excuse to catch up with Roel Muskens of Brushcom to talk about the takeover and its consequences.
It all started about two years ago, when Favagrossa approached Brushcom at the ICA fair in Nashville. Wouldn’t they be interested in cooperation? “Favagrossa is very much in the low-volume car washing business.”, says Brushcoms Roel Muskens. “They supply many large manufacturers, like WashTec, for their rollover machines. Favagrossa mainly works from a mass production perspective. While Brushcom is much more specialized in high-volume car washing and customization. With different colors, applications and materials for high-volume car washes. Like a Holz, DICO and Christ. And we supply car wash tunnels in the USA. That was precisely the specialization that Favagrossa was lacking. We gradually started talking about hooking up and after two years they offered a very good deal. Now we work together under one banner, the Brush World Group.”
Family business
Muskens calls it a nice development. “The name Favagrossa is known worldwide. As a family business consisting of three generations, they are without a doubt the market leader in brush equipment for carwashes. The machinery they have, the knowledge and expertise of the product, the piece of automation; they have built a beautiful company.
“We are also a family business, but we will never catch up with that. We were a disrupter in the market 17 years ago because we saw opportunities in brushes for high-volume carwash systems. We focused on new developments and small-scale production, and that got a little out of hand. It’s absolutely a luxury problem, but it also makes it possible to join forces with such a large party.”
Muskens tells us that the collaboration means more production capacity and strength. “We have a joint customer in America, Tommy’s. They buy brushes from us for a large part of their car washes. But that involves such large numbers. Our production location in the Netherlands is simply not equipped for that. While Favagrossa can handle large orders like this very well. We were already thinking about expanding. So this cooperation landed at exactly the right time.”
Synergy
Brushcom will continue to operate as an independent brand under the flag of Favagrossa. Muskens will stay in charge of Brushcom. Together with Leonardo and his father Francesco Favagrossa, he forms the three-member board of directors. Favagrossa will be keeping their focus on serial production of car wash brushes. While Brushcom continues as “brush engineers,” as Muskens calls himself. “We deliver much more custom made products and are more customer-oriented, while Favagrossa is mainly product-oriented. That makes for a nice synergy.”
Wall Street
Brushcom continues to specialize in high-volume car washing and remains focused on end consumers. It wants to keep building on its distribution network in the Americas. While Favagrossa continues to focus on the major manufacturers. “Together we will look at how we can grow further in the market. Especially towards America.” What makes the US especially interesting for the carwash brush industry has everything to do with the wave of consolidation currently taking place there. “Wall Street has discovered carwashing. Where Starbucks has thousands of locations in the U.S., there are some 20,000 combined car-washing locations. So that’s another huge growth market. With private equity money, car washes are being built en masse and locations shuttered. It’s a huge task just to supply those new buildings with brush equipment. Let alone when the brushes at existing locations start to wear out and need replacing. But together we can handle these large quantities, I have every confidence in that.”
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