ORMA Chipwood Manufacturing.

The business problem

ORMA manufactured high-quality wood-based panels, particleboards, and melamine-faced boards. The products ended up in furniture, kitchen cabinets, and interior fittings across Turkey. But the company had a positioning gap: architects and interior designers, the people who actually specify materials in premium projects, barely knew ORMA existed as a design-grade option.

That gap was the problem I was hired to close.

I joined straight out of an Industrial Design undergraduate degree. That background mattered. Architects don’t evaluate materials the way procurement teams do. They think in surfaces, finishes, and stories. Convincing them to specify ORMA required speaking their language before making any sales argument.

Why this was hard

ORMA’s existing customers were furniture manufacturers and construction contractors. They bought on price, lead time, and specification sheets. The sales motion was transactional.

The architect and designer segment operated on entirely different logic. They needed to see materials installed in real projects. They needed to trust that a product had an aesthetic identity worth recommending to a client. And they needed a reason to switch their default preferences, which were often set years earlier at architecture school.

There was no existing playbook for this at ORMA. No segment-specific positioning, no partnerships with design showrooms, no product lines pitched at the design community rather than the contractor catalogue. Everything had to be built from scratch.

What I built

Opening the architect segment

I started with research: which firms were specifying competing products, what their project types looked like, and where they went to discover new materials. That shaped the targeting.

From there I built the segment development infrastructure. New product positioning that led with finish quality and aesthetic range rather than industrial specifications. Partner showroom agreements where architects could see and touch the materials in context. Product line extensions designed for the segment rather than adapted from existing contractor SKUs.

The output was a better functioning channel with credible marketing efforts that grew up the company order quantity year over year.

Trade fair execution

ORMA had trade fair presence before I joined. It was passive: a stand, a catalogue, a team waiting to be approached. I redesigned both national presences as active relationship and lead generation events.

That meant structured meeting programmes with pre-identified architect and designer targets, demonstration setups showing materials in finished design contexts, and a follow-up sequence turning fair attendance into qualified pipeline.

Both fairs generated measurable increases in qualified B2B leads. More importantly, they gave existing clients the face-to-face time that industrial B2B relationships require but rarely get built into the calendar.

Website and app redesign

The digital presence was built as a corporate must-have, ticking the box. It led with low value content, without much offering to the customers. That was the wrong first impression for a customer from other industries or designers browsing for inspiration.

I led a full UX/UI redesign from agency brief through to launch in four months. The constraint was useful: it forced clear prioritisation. The result led with finished application photography showing materials installed in real projects, and a mobile app that let architects browse the range in context rather than through a parts catalogue. Also an interactive kitchen designing page still in use in 2026.

Managing the project across design, development, marketing, and business stakeholders in four months gave me early experience in what digital transformation actually requires: clear decision rights and a willingness to cut scope rather than delay launch.

What this teaches about SME buyers

B2B marketing at ORMA taught me something I’ve seen confirmed in every role since. SME buyers, whether they are architects, contractors, or business owners, do not respond to feature lists. They respond to confidence, the customer value and credibility.

Confidence comes from understanding. Before a buyer will change a material specification or a vendor relationship, they need to believe that the alternative fits their world. That belief is built through education and demonstration, not through discounts or sales calls.

The architect segment at ORMA had no frame of reference for a premium particleboard in a design context. My job was to build that frame before making any commercial ask. Educate the segment first. Convert it second.

That sequence applies directly to how I think about marketing intelligence tools for DACH SMEs today. Small business owners are not waiting for another SaaS dashboard. They are waiting for something that clearly fits their workflow and speaks their operational language. The marketing job is the same: build the frame, then make the ask.