Henco. Becoming the installer's best friend.

When the product lasts 50 years, the real game is to be played around it.

Henco is a Belgian manufacturer of underfloor heating systems. Think pipes, fittings, tubes, connectors, actuators, control bars, … : all high-quality products with a lifecycle of up to 50 (!) years.

Although this sounds like a dream, it’s really not.

Once a Henco system is installed in the floor, it stays there for decades with little chance for repeat purchases.

Now add the market reality. Roughly a hundred competitors sell near-identical products, including significantly cheaper alternatives coming from China. Layer on rising interest rates, higher raw material costs, and a construction market with fewer new builds and renovations. When heating and piping is your core, the pressure is real.

For years, Henco operated in what you would call a push market. They’d push large volumes of core products into distribution channels, build brand awareness through point-of-sale campaigns or trade presence and make sure they’d favour the installer with competitive pricing. In that model, product quality alone is not enough to win. Not when the product next to yours looks the same and costs considerably less.

Henco's leadership recognised that the game had to change. Instead of pushing volume and hoping for the best, they needed to pull the installer toward Henco. Make the installer choose Henco before walking into the wholesaler. Become, in their own words, the installer's best friend.

Enter Made.

A digital ecosystem that earns loyalty one login at a time.

Over a partnership that now spans +5 years, Made designed and developed two digital platforms for Henco.

MyHenco is a web platform built for professional installers, accessible behind a personal login. It brings together everything an installer needs in one place: a full product catalogue, technical manuals, installation tutorials, videos and downloadable data sheets.

But MyHenco goes well beyond a digital library. Installers can log their projects, track which materials they used, run floor plan simulations and generate price estimates. A dedicated contact portal connects them directly with Henco's support team and with other installers in the network.

The real power of MyHenco is stickiness. Once an installer starts logging projects, tracking materials and running simulations through the platform, the switching cost to a competitor becomes significant. It is not a catalogue you browse once. It is a work tool you open every day.

HenConnect is the companion mobile app, also designed for installers. Today, it serves as a mobile access point to the MyHenco ecosystem alongside introductory content. But its real value is architectural. HenConnect is built on a composable foundation, designed as a future-proof touchpoint that can absorb any new features and integrations easily.

That forward-looking architecture is already proving its worth. Digital innovations like Henco's Smart Monitoring system, which tracks water consumption in real time and can automatically shut off the supply when it detects a leak, plug directly into HenConnect. As Henco expands its range of connected products, the app is ready to absorb them without needing to be rebuilt from scratch.

Together, MyHenco and HenConnect represent something bigger than two standalone digital tools. They are the infrastructure of a strategic shift. In a market where the product alone cannot differentiate enough, Henco is building differentiation through the daily digital relationship with the people who install their systems. And that relationship, unlike a pipe in the floor, is one that grows over time.

Understanding the problem first.

Our work began with a discovery track designed to find Henco's unique edge. We held scoping sessions to pin down their specific business challenges and map out every stakeholder involved. To get a global perspective, we brought Henco teams from different countries together to map the customer journey, identifying exactly where the process broke down and where we could add value.

We then took that journey to the people who actually use the products: installers in the Benelux. Comparing the internal view with the reality of the people on the ground allowed us to validate the journey and identify real-world friction.

These insights were translated into several concepts and tested through a quantitative survey. To make sure we were building the right things, we used a MoSCoW evaluation to rank these ideas based on their desirability for the installer, technical feasibility, and business viability. This process gave us a clear roadmap, with MyHenco and HenConnect as the two priority projects.

Establishing a digital DNA.

Before building specific features for MyHenco or HenConnect, we focused on the long-term architecture of the brand. Henco needed a digital foundation that could carry their entire ecosystem for years to come.

We developed a comprehensive design system and a refreshed branding identity to serve as the "connective tissue" for all future tools. This way whether an installer was on the mobile app, the professional portal, or the corporate website, the experience felt unified. This foundation was so effective that when it came time to redesign Henco’s main website later on, we already had the visual language and components ready to go.

Testing and agile execution.

Once we defined the MVP features for MyHenco, we moved into wireframing and user testing. We brought these early designs back to the installers, using their feedback to refine the UI and moving into development.

Our developers worked in parallel with the design team in agile sprints. This allowed us to build as soon as a design was finalized. For the HenConnect mobile app, we planned the rollout in three stages. We prioritized a clickable prototype for the first release to coincide with the ISH trade fair. This gave Henco a tangible tool to showcase to their clients, proving their commitment to innovation while the full backend was still being polished in subsequent sprints.