The businessman Josep Zaragoza is driven by the impulse to do things differently. This determination led him to found Cerygres 40 years ago, and has now led the company to promote a new sales method from Queràmic. The company, which is part of the Cerygres group, aims to revolutionize the sector with this new system, which offers buyers various different designs of complete bathrooms based on current trends and various styles, which are purchased in closed packages.
After the implementation of this Queràmic sales system, Cerygres expects to increase its global turnover by 25%, reaching nine million euros in 2025. The group expects to close 2024 with figures similar to those of 2023, when it registered sales of 6.7 million euros. And it will maintain these figures despite having had the Queràmic store closed for renovation for ten months, something they have achieved by boosting the online channel.
This new sales method has four decades of activity behind it from Cerygres. After about six years working for a ceramic company that distributed in Catalonia, Josep Zaragoza became a delegate for a large company and, in parallel, launched to create Cerygres. "I thought I was capable of doing on my own what I was already doing," he recounts alongside his son and now general director of Queràmic-Grupo Cerygres, Jordi Zaragoza.
The new sales method reduces prices and facilitates purchase: "We have clients who have chosen all the material for a bathroom in seven minutes"After consolidating itself as a distributor of renovation and interior design materials, the company opened its first store five years later in Molins de Rei. Now, the establishment has 4,500 square meters of offices, exhibition, and warehouse,that add up to 1,800 more meters in the Castellón municipality of Onda, a neuralgic zone for the sector.
From that same desire for differentiation, Cerygres specialized in the field of ceramics, bathrooms, and parquet, but not in construction in general, as many companies in the sector did. "We have always grown by trying to do what not everyone does," Zaragoza emphasizes. From this perspective, the company opened in the Catalan capital in 2001, with an establishment on Indústria street with Roger de Flor.
It was seven years ago when Cerygres chose to incorporate Queràmic as a new brand of the group: "We wanted more direct communication with our client, both professional and private, under a brand that was not as broad as Cerygres." Thus the firm was born, through which they have generated a wide portfolio of private label products.
"With the same philosophy that we like to differentiate ourselves, after 24 years with the Barcelona store, we wanted to do something different, something that would solve problems that clients have when renovating their bathroom," highlights the founder and owner of the company. His son and general director, and anyone who has gone through the situation, corroborates it: renovating a bathroom from scratch can be a complex task given the endless options to choose from for each of its elements and details.
Given this complexity, Queràmic has promoted its new sales method: to choose the material to renovate a complete bathroom, the client has the possibility of choosing between 25 pre-configured packages, which reflect current trends and styles, for which they have had the advice of the Ceramic Technology Institute. Under the name QueEasy, the company has invested one million euros in renovating the establishment and developing the system, conceived with the collaboration of the consulting firm Venture Experience.
The company plans to export its method to other cities nationwideThe new method offers "a new formula to buy a complete bathroom in the blink of an eye; you just have to know the size and model to get a closed price," highlights Jordi Zaragoza. "It's like going to buy a shirt;we have clients who have chosen all the material for a bathroom in seven minutes," emphasizes the general director.
"We have tried to simplify what is complicated," even when choosing the size of the bathroom: you choose between S, M or L based on floor plans drawn to real size on the floor in the store. Afterwards, the client chooses from the 25 shopping carts, with fixed prices and specified according to the size. The system, also available online with the same steps, allows visualizing and sending the result with 360-degree renders, as highlighted by the two company executives.
Both emphasize that, being closed packages, the price is much more competitive, due to the quantity of product acquired by the company. "By having more purchasing power, we have achieved a price reduction ranging between 20 and 35%," assures the company's founder, who has patented "everything that was patentable" of the new system at a European level.
The group, which currently has a staff of 28 employees, plans to export its method beyond Barcelona, and take it to other cities at a national level, adapting the 25 bathroom proposals to the tastes and trends of each place. And it is "an easily scalable model" that will start in Valencia, taking advantage of its distribution center in Onda and the similarity of Mediterranean tastes, and will then continue in Madrid, with a conviction: "This method has come to revolutionize the sector, and not only that of bathrooms, but it will go further."
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