Ask Franck
Ask Franck
Not sure which front door best suits your home? Send some photos of your house and/or façade and our architect Franck will help you.
The vision of our business manager, Franck De Munster
For over 40 years, Harinck has been the reference for durable, safe and aesthetic door panels built into PVC or aluminium joinery. Founder Frans Harinck has since passed on the baton to the next generation. When architect Franck De Munster met his wife Kathleen Harinck, a new world opened up for him. Today, he puts all his creative insight and architectural passion into growing the family business. We asked him about his unique vision.
I completed my training as an architect at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. Then I had an independent office for ten years. When I met my wife Kathleen, I got into the business of front doors. My background is particularly useful at Harinck. As an architect, I always strive for originality and feel an unstoppable urge to design new things. This is a creative asset, but there are also advantages in the technical field. Knowledge of windows, techniques and installation systems comes in very handy here. Customers appreciate that our insight goes beyond installing a door panel. We look beyond gluing and painting.
I work pretty much on gut feeling, but on a calculated gut feeling. Harinck is a family business, so decisions are sometimes made between soup and chips. There is a lot of trust between the members of the management. My brother-in-law Koen Harinck is a born entrepreneur and visionary designer. Kathleen, in turn, is a real people manager. So we complement each other well.
Not at all. You get to keep up with all the trends in architecture, building and remodelling as a professional occupation. I look around a lot and try to absorb everything like a sponge. Sustainability is a hot topic right now. The challenge is to convert new insights into attractive design language and innovative techniques.
We highly value circularity. We strive to ensure that all materials can be reused in a healthy way. I follow current affairs closely and attend lectures to keep up to date. We have evolved over the years from a company that mainly produced plastic to a focus on aluminium. We recognised early on that plastic is not sustainable. Moreover, we guarantee that you can reuse the aluminium: all our applications can be completely disassembled. We start with parts and end with components.
It is a beautiful product that lasts a long time and lends itself well to circular use. It does cost more to manufacture, but its longevity means the investment is guaranteed to pay off. It is a lot sturdier than plastic and has a timeless look, which benefits the design. Aluminium is also an easy material to adapt to new colour trends, for example.
The patented Magnetude system allowed us to stand out. We were pioneers and it has since become the standard in Belgium. The system saves you a lot of time during installation and prevents problems later on. Today, the magnetic system can be used not only on doors, but also on facade cladding. Magnetude enables a totally different design of façades.
We innovate in the interests of our customers, but equally important are our own people. We do everything we can to motivate them. So that they can be proud of where they work. A workplace that puts innovation and progress first. Good employees are not easy to find, so we make a conscious effort to show our employees how much we value them, for instance by involving them in all kinds of decisions.
Making the world a more beautiful place by our presence on the streets. And you can take that literally. We are present in almost every street in Belgium. It still does something to me every time I notice one of our products on the façade. We are proud of everything we make and hopefully so are the people who live in that house. That's what we do it for. I consider myself lucky every day that we can make such a personal product.