If you pay close attention to high-end kitchen or household appliances, you will find that high-end products are not only high-end in terms of functional excellence, but also their main components, such as carefully crafted, smooth and highly durable stove and smoke machine panels, or oven glass panels that achieve unique design languages and excellent visual effects.
Due to the industry, ordinary consumers may be relatively unfamiliar with the SCHOTT brand, but this does not affect the influence of SCHOTT Glass in various related application fields in the world, in fact, as the market leader and technical expert in the deep processing glass industry for home appliances, SCHOTT Flat Glass provides complete glass solutions for world-renowned home appliance brands including Whirlpool, BSH, Electrolux, Haier, etc., especially high-end categories.
At this year's AWE exhibition, SCHOTT's flat glass division made its debut, and at the same time brought a variety of innovative solutions for the field of home appliances, from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, SCHOTT's image of "glass experts" is becoming clearer. Home Power Grid had the honor to interview Iris Yang, Sales Director of SCHOTT Flat Glass Business Unit in Asia, and discussed the highlights of the new products brought by this time and SCHOTT's future development in the Chinese market.
Full of confidence in the Chinese market
"We hope to interpret the concept of 'where the heart is, light up life' to our partners in a vivid and intuitive form, so that users can see, touch and experience more possibilities of glass, and inspire them." When talking about the purpose of this exhibition, Yang Xiaodan shared with us her ideas and the entire Asia Pacific team. Yang Xiaodan also said that he hopes to take this opportunity to show SCHOTT's innovative solutions to more potential customers, while further enhancing brand awareness, through mutual learning and communication with customers and professionals and insight into market demand, better adjust market strategies and promote further innovation.
When talking about his views on the Chinese market, Yang Xiaodan believes that China's home appliance market is more dynamic and more varied than other mainstream markets, with higher requirements for differentiation and personalization, and more youthful and artistic trends in home appliances. On the other hand, the continuous pursuit of intelligence, easy-to-clean performance and aesthetics, so that the use of glass in home appliances is also steadily increasing, which is both a challenge and an opportunity for SCHOTT.
Yang Xiaodan said that despite the adverse impact of the epidemic in fiscal 2020, the domestic business has achieved good growth through the development of new products and new customers, and SCHOTT is full of confidence in the future of the Chinese market. According to the 2019/2020 annual report released by THE SCHOTT Group, SCHOTT generated sales of 2.24 billion euros in the fiscal year, a record high. Sales in China increased by 10.1 percent year-on-year to RMB2.22 billion (EUR 283.7 million), making SCHOTT the world's largest market for growth.
Break the game with innovation with differences
With the upgrading of consumption and the rise of the main consumption force of Generation Z, the home appliance industry, including kitchen appliances, has ushered in new challenges. "Set-up, intelligent, and artistic are the main trends we have observed," Yang Xiaodan told the home power grid reporter, "to this end we have developed a variety of design and technical solutions to break through the traditional cognition and fully display more possibilities of glass." ”
It is understood that this time SCHOTT brought flat glass products and innovative solutions with the core theme of 'unique design, artistic complete set and functional innovation'. Among them, for the current consumer and customer pursuit of artistry, SCHOTT® Duo Design achieves double-sided high-temperature ink printing and excellent scratch resistance, chemical resistance, and breakthrough visual and tactile experiences, such as 3D effects, matte and light effects, or realistic natural textures, while SCHOTT® MetalLook can present a stylish metallic appearance on smooth glass, as well as a variety of shades and brushed textures. And on the strong metallic texture to achieve fine icons, screen display and touch function. "These technologies can bring a new look and texture to home appliances, which is perfectly in line with the needs of high-end fee groups for personalized aesthetics and quality of life." Yang Xiaodan introduced.
SCHOTT showcased a variety of innovative design solutions, with individual textures that highlight the visually striking urban aesthetic.
Due to the difference in culture and usage habits, the consumer pain points that foreign and domestic home appliances need to face are also different, and "water and soil dissatisfaction" has also become one of the main reasons for many foreign brands to "fold". In this regard, Yang Xiaodan said that SCHOTT has always been paying attention to the different needs of customers and constantly solving users' pain points with innovative technologies. For example, for Chinese cooking like stir-frying, Chinese kitchen fumes are heavier, for the characteristics of higher cleaning requirements, SCHOTT developed SCHOTT® CleanPlus technology, through advanced glass surface treatment technology to achieve excellent hydrophobic, oil trap performance, so that oil is difficult to bond, easier to remove, and glass is highly durable and resistant to high temperatures, can be used in ovens, gas stoves and other products, to meet the requirements of different use scenarios.
Comparison of hydrophobic effects of SCHOTT glass and ordinary glass. After a special surface treatment of the glass, the water on the SCHOTT® CleanPlus product on the left side can be easily rolled off, which is easy to clean daily.
Due to the particularity of glass materials, safety issues are also a very concerned aspect of consumers when buying products, until now, on the oven glass bursting, gas stove glass panel self-explosion and other events still occur from time to time, in this regard, Yang Xiaodan believes that the reasons for glass fragmentation are many, the original glass has quality problems, the manufacturer's process and quality control capabilities are insufficient, and improper use by users may cause incidents. SCHOTT glass has German quality and excellent safety performance advantages, has won an excellent reputation in major markets around the world, including China, on the other hand, with more than 40 years of deep cultivation in the home appliance industry, SCHOTT can also provide customers with technical support in product design and installation, reduce the probability of crushing from the source, and provide reliable safety.
Forge the future with confidence
Made in Germany has always been synonymous with rigor, meticulousness and high quality, and SCHOTT, which originated in Germany, is no exception. In the course of the interview, Yang Xiaodan's confidence in SCHOTT glass products revealed from his words became the best evidence for this. According to the data, SCHOTT's annual production of flat glass exceeds 90 million pieces worldwide, and it has production and research and development bases in 10 countries.
"In the future, we will pay more attention to innovative products and value-added services to help customers achieve the expectation of attaching equal importance to the "value" and "connotation" of high-end products." Yang Xiaodan told the home grid reporter, "We will continue to optimize and self-improve internally, and at the same time actively seek the opinions and support of customers and industry experts externally to develop more and better solutions that are more suitable for Chinese customers." ”
It can be expected that with the arrival of SCHOTT flat glass new technology, the home appliance industry will stir up a new round of waves, for home appliance companies, SCHOTT flat glass from the kitchen and even the whole house home appliances glass solutions, can better empower home appliance manufacturing, light up inspiration, through THE DESIGN INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS BROUGHT BY SCHOTT, I believe that there will be more high-end, intelligent, personalized home appliances into the Chinese kitchen in the future, bringing consumers a sense of quality 'bursting' life experience.