SALES STRATEGY
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• In France, Ghereau has a whopping 53% of the market for refrigerated trailers and bodies, which Pratt says equates to around 2,800 semi-trailers and 1,200 rigids a year. It also has distributors in most northern European countries, as well as in Spain, Italy and Greece, The UK accounts for around 10% of Ghereau's total output and is therefore a very important market—the biggest outside France, says Pratt. But it's not one Chereau has plans to dominate—mainly because of production line restrictions. ''The production lino can only turn out a finite number of vehicles," he says. "There wouldn't be any real point in depriving an agent in, say, Denmark, to give us 450 trailers a year in the UK. So I don't really see our market share changing much."
But what would happen if a larger order suddenly came in for, say, 150 trailers? "We've never taken an order of that size," he says. "Ghereau and Gray & Adams, both family companies, tend to make small runs for customers. Schmitz and Lamberet, on the other hand, both tend to take big orders to the exclusion of the small man. So it isn't really an issue."