Be their best client
Respect our suppliers
Manufacturing bespoke products is a highly demanding process. At Schmidt Groupe, every customer project is unique and made to order, so our suppliers are mission-critical to our success.
The quality of our supplier relationships has always been a cornerstone of our business model. Our relationships have been built and maintained over time while promoting such values as fairness, high standards and trust.
Promoting short supply chains
We prefer to source our materials from local supply chains. In accordance with our convictions and our business model, producing as close as possible to where our products are used is key to reducing lead-times, transport and carbon emissions.
Therefore, we select our suppliers according to their proximity to our production sites: first local, then regional, national and finally international.
85% of our expenditure is concentrated in Western Europe, with half in France.
Taking an even closer look at our production sites reveals that:
- Every year we work with 500 suppliers across eastern France, which accounts for €82 million of our expenditure
- €66 million of which is spent in the Rhine basin, where our production sites are located, with 432 suppliers
- One in every four suppliers is based in Alsace
We only buy outside Europe, such as in Asia, if the product is not available nearby. Our procurement policy is only too clear: we travel to our tier 1 suppliers to conduct audits, check their working conditions and ensure that our quality requirements are met. We have also started auditing our tier 2 suppliers and our partners. Our requirements are the same everywhere, without exception.
In 2025, the Sustainable Supplier Relations and Procurement label, the only public certification scheme of its kind, was renewed for three years. Today, we are one of only 100 French companies to have obtained this label.
This label does not reward intentions. It certifies the company’s actions and practices, including financial fairness, constant dialogue, and collaborative construction.
Ensuring swift payments
Our average payment time is 23.5 days, and that figure is constantly improving. We have shortened payment times from 30 days in 2018 to less than 24 days today for more than 300,000 annual invoices. Our pathway is aligned – and even ahead of – our medium-term objectives.
Why is this so important? Because quickly paying invoices helps bolster our partners’ cash flow, meaning that they can tap into the financial resources to invest, grow and keep pace with our Group over the long term.
At Schmidt Groupe, buyers are responsible for paying their suppliers. We have installed automatic reminder software and a strong prevention culture within the Procurement Division.
We remain convinced that trust and a robust partnership between customers and suppliers are the architects of performance.
Cultivating trust
We measure the quality of our supplier relationships, because we want to be, and remain, the preferred client of each of our 1,700 suppliers.
Since 2018, we have carried out a supplier satisfaction survey every three years. We listen to our suppliers just as much as we listen to our own customers.
Our aim is to establish and maintain a partnership built upon high standards and fairness.
If we want to move forward, then we need to understand what our partners think of us, and we have to gain those insights using scientific methods
Such is the requirement voiced by Laurent Belloni, Schmidt Groupe’s CPO since 2017.
The 2025 edition of our survey paints a clear picture of the unrelenting efforts across the Group to build higher quality partnerships, while confirming that results have continually improved. The survey findings are shared with all our buyers and have enabled us to define an ambitious action plan to reduce payment times, receive more bids on our invitations to tender, clarify our specifications, and inject greater transparency into our selection criteria. Our suppliers regularly receive tables showing their performance and any nonconformities.
This requirement goes hand in hand with constant dialogue and the determination to build stronger relationships together.
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97% of our suppliers are satisfied with their collaboration
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91% feel like partners
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84.3/100 average score given by our suppliers
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+57 points a solid NPS in 2025
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71% criteria where we are making progress
Raising awareness across our ecosystem
We support our suppliers in leading their environmental transition strategies. In 2024, 65 suppliers carried out their carbon footprint assessment with our help, which earned us the Procurement Leadership Award.
We also provide all our suppliers with free access to the Global Climate Initiatives platform to help them create and manage their environmental transition plan.
Since 2024, all the employees in our Procurement Division have been assigned CSR objectives.
Working with vocational rehabilitation centres
We currently work with three vocational rehabilitation centres, and we have been working with the centre in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines for more than 20 years.
These partners pick orders for our Group before packing and packaging parts for production or shipment to customers.
This collaborative arrangement is fully in keeping with our commitment to engage with society and our ambition to promote employability for people with disabilities. As with all our suppliers, we are building a lasting relationship underpinned by trust and respect.
Growing together
60% of our raw material suppliers have been working with us for more than 10 years.
Verrissima, our sheet glass supplier in Goetzenbruck (north-eastern France), illustrates this long-term approach. The company’s CEO Jonathan Metz explains:
“Our collaboration started after we submitted the winning bid on Schmidt’s invitation to tender for a two-sided mirror, and then we went on to supply them with stained glass artwork and subsequently glass drawer sets. Schmidt wanted us to produce a million pieces a year, which was a major challenge for our company. We sat down with Schmidt and our product and methods managers to discuss how we could scale up our production. Year on year, our production grew from 90,000 to 300,000 drawer sets, then 500,000, and finally it reached one million. They have never been late paying our invoices.”
Some machine manufacturers send their teams to us for training. Our requirements are high, and our specifications are extremely detailed, which allows them to improve their skills and expertise. They can take the knowledge that they learn from our Group and put it into practice elsewhere. That is how we grow an entire industry.
Mediation system
Schmidt Groupe places special importance in maintaining high-quality and balanced relationships with its suppliers. Any supplier wishing to report a problem, lodge a complaint or request a review of their situation can contact our mediation service directly at the following address: mediation@groupe.schmidt.
This address is intended solely for companies under contract with Schmidt Groupe.
Suppliers wishing to seek independent mediation can also refer the matter to France’s Business Ombudsman.
