Dongguan bathroom hardware: hard training internal strength shaping brand

In the sanitary ware market, due to differences in urban and rural consumption, some small and medium sanitary ware brands are mainly stationed in small towns and rural households. Therefore, whether it is efforts to create an independent sanitary ware brand or occupy the future sanitary ware market segment, it is necessary for the SMEs to be cautious. Choose a business development strategy. Through the analysis of market trends, the creation of independent brands will be increasingly valued by more sanitary companies.

Looking at the domestic sanitary ware market, international sanitary ware brands have occupied half of the world. Because the internationally renowned sanitary ware companies have advantages in management, technology, brand building, etc., or in marketing, channel integration and capital chain, etc., compared with domestic companies. Therefore, the entire bathroom market will become more fierce in brand competition in the coming years. However, at this stage, it coincides with the great opportunity for China's urbanization to build bathroom and building materials consumption, and Foshan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Fujian provinces have already formed a sanitary industry group, which is an opportunity for Chinese sanitary ware.

So, in this situation, how should small and medium-sized sanitary ware companies meet the challenges? Is it the creation of an independent brand, or is it to "dress someone else's clothes?" - OEM production? Is it to occupy a potential market segment or to compete for an existing market? And what about sanitary ware dealers? With these questions, the author recently interviewed Dongguan sanitary ware companies and bathroom distributors. Dongguan City is located in the south-central part of Guangdong Province, on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary, north to Guangzhou and south to Shenzhen; adjacent to Foshan Sanitary Ware Industry Area, it has obvious location advantages. There are famous brands such as Marco Polo, Casio and Sanya sanitary ware, as well as famous brands such as Botai, Jinchi, Longbang and Jiahong. The author interviewed these sanitary companies and summarized the process and characteristics of their brand development as follows:

First-line bathroom brand "wall flower wall outside incense"

In Dongguan City, Marco Polo, Casio and Sanya Sanitary Ware belong to the first-line brands. Marco Polo manufactures ceramic tiles and toilets. It is an independent brand; Casio is a sanitary brand invested by Switzerland in Thailand. The annual production value is 200 million. The products sold in China are mainly imported from Thailand: Sanya Sanitary Ware is a Hong Kong-owned enterprise. Acting for swimming pool equipment in Finland and the United States. These three companies have great influence in the industry. In addition to Marco Polo, the popularity of Casio and Sanya Sanitary Ware in Dongguan is not high.

The reason is that Marco Polo attached importance to the headquarters of Dongguan, while Casio and Shengya Sanitary Ware are mainly export-oriented. Sanitary products are mainly used in high-end routes. Shengya Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd. is continuously developing its diversification and specification series. Newly developed products include high, medium and low-grade products. Casio's sanitary products are mainly used in top luxury hotels, star hotels, high-end clubs and large-scale public projects. Due to the difference in the target consumer market, companies combined their own development and channel characteristics, thus resulting in the visibility of the above two bathroom brands in the Dongguan market is not very high.

Second-line bathroom brand independent innovation to win the market First-line brands pay more attention to the high-end market, then the second-line bathroom brand marketing strategy is how? A local manufacturer of smart bathroom products is representative of the region. The manufacturer owns advanced production lines in Europe. It is currently one of the most environmentally friendly and energy-saving water tank manufacturers in China. It sells 30,000 sets of water tank equipment annually. The company is mainly engaged in the research and development, production of sanitary ware and water tanks, and has a front-of-house technical cooperation research institute and patented technology for sanitary ware, as well as fast product innovation. It is a one-stop process from research and development of sanitary ware and water tank accessories to design and manufacturing. The person in charge of the company told the author about the process and characteristics of the company's establishment of an independent bathroom brand:

The company initially produced bathroom tank equipment. After 2005, the company responded to the changing trend of the market, combined with the results of inspections abroad, that the future of the bathroom market, smart bathroom will be a major trend; due to smart bathroom flush, seat heating, warm air drying , Water-saving environmental protection and clean and deodorizing function features, the company decisively decided to develop, produce intelligent toilets. The launch of this product line is the need for the company's long-term strategic development. Smart bathroom is also a trend of corporate technological innovation.

For many bathroom products using celebrity endorsement forms, the company does not blindly follow the trend, they advocate the concept of safety, comfort, environmental protection, directly return the actual profits to consumers, reduce product costs and improve competitive advantage. Although in today's market, smart bathroom is a high-end product, the price is a bit expensive, but the goal of the company to develop smart bathroom is to let the product into the homes of ordinary people, so that the average consumer can also afford it.

At the same time, in the after-sales service, they promised to solve the problem in 48 hours. Specifically, throughout the country, products have quality or assembly problems, and service personnel will arrive within 48 hours to solve the problem in the shortest possible time. Since the company initially produced water tank equipment and had a broad market channel in the urban areas, they would use this channel to let smart sanitary wares take the road of “encircling the city from the countryside”: first occupy the low-end market of small and medium-sized towns, and then combine with the central city. The general agent, to expand market share, to the high-end market.

Since many bathroom brands use experiential marketing to promote bathroom products in the form of stores, allowing customers to feel the products themselves, the company will also consider the store model in the future development, so that the store dealers and agents can be combined.

Committed to internal strength to respond to the changes in the bathroom brand The reason why we chose to create a brand in Dongguan is that there is a geographical advantage: Dongguan City is located in the Pearl River Delta economic circle, not only economic and foreign trade prosperity, but also very developed traffic, which is also very open for enterprises to develop overseas markets There are benefits; also, there are many famous electronics companies in Dongguan. Smart bathroom will involve a lot of electronic components, Dongguan Dongguan enterprises can focus on procurement, not only mature technology, there are multiple options, can reduce procurement costs. Some smart bathroom manufacturers, either only produce phantoms, or only part of the structure, lack of manufacturing integration. However, the company can produce a whole package and sell it as a whole, which will help improve the competitiveness of manufacturing companies.

During the interview in Dongguan, the author also investigated Dongguan Luosha building materials decoration city and Humen's building materials city, and had a dialogue with the local bathroom distributor. In the randomly sampled local bathroom brands, many dealers stated to the author that they were not aware of Dongguan sanitary ware brand, mainly engaged in international famous brand and Foshan sanitary brand. Some dealers believe that Dongguan does not form a bathroom industry group, and the brand awareness of bathroom brands needs to be improved. Channel construction still needs improvement.

In a modern society with a rapidly developing market economy, companies must develop and competition is inevitable. However, there are opportunities for competition. Enterprises should overcome difficulties and overcome difficulties to produce quality products. The company took the following measures to respond to changes in the future sanitary brand competition:

First, build quality.

In the procurement of smart toilet electronic components, not only relying on the advantages of Dongguan as a "world electronic manufacturing base", but also a large number of electronic components purchased from abroad, can effectively ensure intelligent toilet smart technology. The concept of smart toilet consumption is water, safety, environmental protection and comfort, which are very strict requirements on technology and electronic components.

Second, process supervision.

The company implements strict production supervision, refines it to individual employees, and adopts a special-person responsibility system.

Third, the quality test.

Before the product goes to market, it must undergo destructive testing in order to make the products used by consumers more secure and reliable.