Béatrice Balle-Coureau
Meet the team
TRANSPRESS
Beatrice Balle-Coureau, International Product Manager Flotex, discusses her role within Forbo Flooring Systems. Describing how she works with many colleagues across different geographical markets and segments, in order to ensure that `Flotex` is meeting the current and future demands of our customers.
Can you tell me about yourself and your role at Forbo?
I joined Forbo in 2007 and worked in various different financial and marketing positions until taking the International Product Management Flotex role in October 2021. I am the worldwide ambassador for this unique product category, based in Reims, France. My main role is to make sure everything runs smoothly and ultimately that our customers are happy. With the fire-retardant version available, Flotex FR is ideal floor covering for the bus, rail and marine segments. Not only this, it is also a highly customizable product, so offers people plenty of options when looking at designs.
What do you like to do to prepare for a day of work?
To set me up for the day, both mentally and physically, I go to the gym before work and get a workout in. My favourite classes are boxing and yoga; both are great for clearing my headspace.
Where do you get your inspiration and trends from?
As a company we are extremely design conscious and Forbo does a lot of work on trends that is applied to products and sectors, like transport. As a Product Manager, the rich diversity of colleagues and customers also drives my inspiration and direction. The preferred product design and aesthetics can vary from country to country, and there are also big differences in design styling per segment.
However, the marine and the hospitality and leisure sectors share something in common: the desire to create a safe, cosy and inspiring atmosphere for visitors.
How does Forbo bring value to its projects and customers?
Understanding our customer needs in the rail, marine and bus and coach segments is crucial. These are segments with high demands placed upon on them, so a high quality product and service is not a nice to have, but a must have! Flotex FR is the perfect product for all three transport segments, as it’s easy to clean and highly durable, meaning it can withstand high volumes of foot traffic. Also, being a textile floor covering it has good sound absorption qualities and underfoot comfort. Plus, as I said before it is customizable, so Forbo can bring added value by producing unique design ideas, tailor made for our customers.
What do you enjoy most about working at Forbo Flooring Systems?
I have to say it’s my colleagues who are always inspiring me to be the best I can be! They are all so solution orientated and give every project their full thought and attention, so I push myself to put in the same amount of effort to achieve a collaborative result that we can all be proud of. All the people I work with around the world are all so helpful, I find it really stimulating to share ideas with people from different cultures and environments, so that’s definitely something I like about Forbo.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I’m very passionate about “slam poetry”, which is where you write text in a poetic form and perform it on stage. My favourite topic is how women juggle the work-life balance but in a funny way. I have a very dry sense of humour and love to make people laugh. One of the rules of slam poetry is that your stage time is limited to three minutes, which is quite a short space of time making it quite challenging. But it’s exciting, and a good way to express myself. I also recently wrote and published my own book, titled: ‘Le froid n’existe pas’ or ‘Cold does not exist’ which was a childhood dream of mine and it was so much fun to write!
What drives you to be the best you can be?
I really enjoy spending time with my colleagues from abroad. They motivate me to be better at what I do! I also love travelling with my family. We recently visited New York, which was unforgettable, we learnt so much about different cultures and met so many new people it was inspirational. People and their backgrounds interest me immensely and I use these experiences every day at work.