Annika Windmöller, Partner and Director of Corporate Communications at the Windmöller Group.

The strong, ongoing trend towards individualization means that products and services are becoming increasingly personalized. What does this mean for your company?

Annika Windmöller: "The consumer goods industry is actually the one showing the way. Whether you look at Nutella or Nike, placing the consumer's own personality at the forefront is playing a huge role in consumer behavior – for example, having your own name on a product, creating your own running shoe, personalizing gift articles or creating individual, unique jewelry items. This is equally important for our industry – i.e. floors, walls and ceilings – and we would be well-advised to take mega-trends like these to heart in our own product development processes."

Individualization is exposing manufacturers and retailers to new sales opportunities. To what extent are you able to profit from the new openings created by this mega-trend?

The demand for individualization is stronger than ever. At wineo, we are keeping up with this trend by making use of digital printing to create unique flooring surfaces so we can comply with any design requirements. Apart from our high environmental standards, our organic "PURLINE digital" floor has become a major success. A fine example of this consists of our Hellner home furnishings store on the North Sea island of Sylt. The idea here was to reproduce the Sylt beach-type atmosphere in a shop setting, with the result that we actually photographed and digitally re-imaged the main beach on Sylt. Together with our dark oak look, which stands for rustic North Sea docks, this flooring is the essential design element for our unique indoor beach-style staging. "PURLINE digital" is not only one of a kind, but also supports an additional mega-trend – the "nature" fad!

A few years ago, the so-called "random style" would have been unthinkable – now it has become reality. "Random style" refers to the ostensibly random combination of decorative elements, formats or surfaces with the goal of creating unique flooring surfaces. To us at wineo, this represents an opportunity to stage our company and create unique floor styles.

How are you planning to incorporate this keynote theme into your stand at DOMOTEX? What kind of products and service will you be showcasing at DOMOTEX in terms of the trend towards individualization?

As we have been doing for a number of years now, we will continue to highlight digital printing solutions as the way to implement individual ideas. We are also taking the approach of combining different décor, formats and surfaces to create individual, unique interiors. Here, creativity knows no limits.

What do you think will be the future direction of the individualization trend?

We are expecting the current mega-trends to be around for quite a while and for them to have a strong impact on our society. The continuous advances in technology will undoubtedly offer even more opportunities in the realm of individualization, allowing us to create new products and solutions in a fast, flexible and easy manner.