"After earning sixpence, the domestic sanitary ware looked up at the moon."
Text / Frog Kokichi
Just as the trend of intelligence swept the global mobile phone market that year, the home industry has also ushered in a wave of "intelligent home scenes" - at this year's Kitchen &Bath China 2024, smart products have become the standard configuration of almost every brand.
In the past ten years, the bathroom industry, like the automotive industry, has maintained the pace of minor repairs and renovations for another 10 years.
Because for the leaders of mature categories, innovation may break the original advantages, and only challengers who want to break the competitive landscape have the motivation to "subvert" in products or technologies.
But the advent of a new era is not subject to human will. At a time when the traditional bathroom market is gradually becoming saturated, the fine-tuning that will not substantially affect the experience is becoming less and less attractive to consumers.
Intelligence, while making the public's eyes shine and regenerating the impulse to renew, also allows bathroom brands to stand on the same starting line.
This is undoubtedly a huge opportunity for Chinese bathroom brands as challengers.
But if you want to counterattack the upper position, it is not so simple. The pursuit of ideals is like chasing the moon, you must have enough capital in your hands first.
Keep your head down and hurry to look up at the moon
China's 40 consecutive years of urbanization have created a huge market capacity in the sanitary ware industry.
This allows domestic brands to form dislocation competition with international brands, and use the window period of thirty or forty years to earn enough capital to wrestle with international brands.
Wrigley, founded in 1994, is a typical representative of this.
Throughout the development history of China's sanitary ware industry, it can be roughly divided into three stages.
◎ Rapid development period (1970-2013): Urbanization drove the market growth. Foreign brands have entered China in a big way, and domestic brands have been established in a centralized manner. Consumers attach importance to "cost performance", and their spending power is improved together with the requirements for product quality.
◎ High competition period (2014-2017): industry concentration increased. Domestic products have expanded nationwide, and foreign investment has accelerated its development. Consumers have gone from satisfying basic functional needs to pursuing "personalization" and "symbolism".
◎ Stable growth period (2018-present): accelerated penetration of intelligence. The intelligence of home scenes breaks the category boundaries and accelerates the integration of "home furnishing, home appliances, and home decoration". Consumers are gradually returning to rationality, willing to "buy expensive" but unwilling to "buy expensive", and their acceptance of high-end domestic products is increasing year by year.
In the first stage, what domestic brands need to do is to meet the needs of the mass market and produce "qualified" and "quality" products. At this stage, imitation is the biggest innovation.
In the second stage, what domestic brands need to do is to impress consumers in different circles through products with different brands, different styles and technical content. In order to focus on the crowd and impact the high-end market, some domestic products have embarked on the strategy of "one product with multiple brands".
In the third stage, domestic brands are no longer obsessed with breakthroughs and leading in a single technical index of products, but return to consumer demand itself, and provide differentiated solutions through insight into consumers' lifestyles and pain points.
At every stage in the past, Wrigley has keenly stepped on the wind and "mentioned" several "firsts" in the early development.
For example, it is the first to overcome the technical problems of conjoined toilets in China, the first to launch 6L water-saving technology conjoined toilets, and the first to launch "self-cleaning glaze" technology; It was the first to put forward the concept of "humanistic bathroom" and vigorously developed the ergonomics of bathroom products......
Now, the thirty-year-old Wrigley has reached a new fork. Do you continue to earn "sixpence" easily, or do you invest more in your ideals?
Looking down at the "technology accumulation", "patent layout", "product capability" and "brand potential energy" in his hand, Wrigley chose to look up at the moon.
The Chinese evolution of a toilet
What's the first thing to do to travel to the moon? It's to build a "spacecraft".
So, what is the intelligent "spacecraft" in the sanitary ware industry? There is no doubt about a smart toilet.
In the consumption of large household items, there are generally only three factors that can drive consumers to buy, namely: cycle replacement (rigid demand), product function iteration (improvement) and addition of emerging products (improvement).
The smart toilet, a super item with a strong "improved perception", perfectly hits these three points.
According to AVC data, the hardcover matching rate of smart toilets in China's hardcover market in 2022 will be about 28.5%/yoy+3pct.
According to Jiuqian data, the two smart bathroom categories with the highest sales on Tmall in 2022 are smart toilets/smart showers, with a compound growth rate of 23% in GMV from 2017 to 2022.
At the same time, the penetration rate of domestic first-tier cities has risen to 10%. There is no doubt that the smart toilet is the absolute C position in the intelligent bathroom product system, and it is also a stepping stone for domestic products to realize the localization and substitution of high-end bathroom products.
Almost every brand that lays out smart bathrooms will choose to use this single product as a breakthrough point, and Wrigley is no exception.
IN 2023, ARROW LAUNCHED THE SMART TOILET X7 ZOOM, A SMART TOILET THAT HAS UNDERGONE MORE THAN TEN INNOVATIVE UPGRADES FROM THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF "COMFORT, CONVENIENCE, HEALTH AND SAFETY", HOPING TO SOLVE THE DISCOMFORT OF USERS' "BODY FEELING".
For example, the "Foam Shield" designed to prevent splashing, the "0 Water Pressure Flushing" for the water pressure problem of old houses, and the industry's first "Matte Skin-Feeling Ergonomic Seat" take into account the body feeling of users of different ages, genders, and body types.
The annual report shows that in 2023, Wrigley Home's R&D investment will be about 342 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.27%, accounting for 4.47% of the company's operating income.
Up to now, ARROW Home Group has 2,535 authorized patents, including 89 invention patents, 1,661 utility models and 785 designs.
The way forward for long-termists
Nowadays, China's real estate has entered a stage of deep adjustment, although the bathroom industry is facing challenges, but the evolution of the macro environment and the upgrading of consumer demand have also brought new opportunities.
At the macro level, China is moving from the "era of rigid demand" to the "era of rigid demand and improvement".
By the end of 2022, the total number of urban and rural housing construction in China has reached 602 million, and the demand for renovation brought about by the aging of houses has provided a broad market for the sanitary ware industry. The demand for safe, intelligent, green and comfortable home products has become a new engine to promote the development of the industry.
At the micro level, consumers who are willing to pay for improvement are becoming more and more receptive to intelligent products.
In Wu Xiaobo's channel's "2023 New Middle Class Survey", smart home appliances are the most popular products that are most likely to attract the new middle class.
The main reasons why the new middle class is willing to try new products are to improve their sense of well-being (78.5%) and experience a new lifestyle (67.3%). The smart bathroom has won the favor of many people and has become their most satisfactory consumption of smart products.
These trends show that intelligence has become a strategic highland that domestic bathroom brands must seize when moving towards the high-end market. By doing and insisting on two things, ARROW has become one of the leaders in the intelligent transformation of China's sanitary ware industry.
The first thing is to "do what you are good at for a long time".
From providing a single product to providing overall smart home solutions, Wrigley has always taken "continuously improving people's quality of smart home life" as its brand mission, and every business leap is based on its own strengths.
Sanitary ceramics are done well, can the technical advantages be reused on the tiles?
If the bathroom cabinet is done well (waterproof), can the accumulated patented technology be reused in the cabinet?
Since there is an advantage, make the most of it, accumulate and amplify it, and consider the possibility of its reuse in other areas.
The second thing is the "long-term practice of humanism".
Continue to deepen the field of smart home, practice the quality management of the whole value chain, achieve "product leadership, quality win", embed the value chain into all aspects of enterprise operation, and transform the value chain from selling products to customers to developing products guided by customer needs.
At the same time, ARROW is user-centric and improves user experience by continuously optimizing products, channels, terminals and service networks.
For example, the innovative introduction of the "effort" evaluation system to optimize the inconvenience of users in the process of purchase, use and after-sales is targeted.
As Mr. Wu shared and summarized after visiting the Wrigley booth at KBC:
In Wrigley's practice of "people-oriented service", the carrier of "arrow" is the product, the means of "arrow" is science and technology, and the direction of "arrow" is people's hearts. The fickleness and eternity of the human heart are the beginning and end of all innovation.
People's yearning for a better life is building the future direction of the enterprise. In order to meet people's imagination of home, the "Tao" of humanism and the "art" of science and technology are indispensable.
We expect Wrigley, the "arrow" to the moon, to bring more thinking to the industry and more surprises to consumers.