Observation｜The Mutual Involvement Of Sanitary Ware Brands And Whole-House Custom Brands, Is It A Crossover Or A Gap?

Cross-border is a very popular and fashionable word.

But how to cross the border?

Crossing the sea and sky is good, falling into the chasm is not good.

Currently in the market.

Bathroom brands are involved in the whole house customization.

Whole-house custom brands dabble in doing sanitary ware.

Is it a cross-border or uncrossable chasm?

Today we will come together to analyze the actual situation.

 

The bathroom category has always belonged to an industry category with little attention. However, with the gradual improvement of people’s living standards, more and more people began to pay attention to the bathroom, so the development of the bathroom industry is also advancing with the times.

Especially in the bathroom cabinet industry, it feels like a fashion show. Every year there are different styles and styles of bathroom cabinets on the market, and a variety of new materials have been applied to bathroom cabinet products.

While the style of ceramics, showers, hardware, but no significant changes. This is nothing more than the style and style is becoming more and more simple and functional.

In recent years, many bathroom brands in the industry are putting forward the concept of whole-house customization, but the actual market performance is only at the level of good-looking, but not many customers actually buy.

Let’s start with the concept of whole-house customization. In fact, to put it bluntly is the integration of all products used in the bathroom, for integrated customization. For the bathroom cabinet brand, there are greater advantages, because with the changes in the market and consumer attitudes, the bathroom inserts have changed from ceramic countertops to the current bathroom cabinets. It has integrated functions such as storage, washing and grooming, and its appearance is becoming more and more high class. Therefore, the sales of bathroom products are now mainly driven by bathroom cabinets. Generally speaking, customers first choose the style of bathroom cabinets, followed by relatively good choices such as toilets and showers. The style of the bathroom is mainly determined by the bathroom cabinet.

Therefore, bathroom cabinet manufacturers also began to make more storage cabinets to meet the consumer’s toilet storage function, including toilet cabinets, bathroom storage cabinets of all kinds, etc. But in my opinion, after all, this is only a promotional highlight of the brand, and can not be used as a practical solution to consumer pain points.

In general, the brand square store of the whole house custom show bathroom sample room is large enough to do more custom cabinets, but what is actually? At present, the mainstream consumer group in the market is not a large bathroom area. Therefore, in the limited space, basically buy finished bathroom products. The most are some non-standard bathroom cabinet customization, such as cutting corners, hidden columns, changing the cabinet body hidden tube, countertop shaping, etc. These can already meet the needs of most customers. Like in the bathroom to do a variety of custom cabinets, in fact, is only a pseudo-demand. The proportion of customers who really put in the bathroom with storage cabinets is very low.

Then some people will retort. For a large house like a villa, the bathroom is very large, so there must be a demand for it.

This is indeed the case. As a brand, you must think backward. Can your product grade make customers choose the villa? If there is no problem, then congratulations, you have taken the first step. The second step is whether your distributors can find and handle such customers?

Therefore, the overall ability of the brand and the pull of the brand determine the positioning of your customer base. If your brand customer base is positioned as high-end villa and house customers, all the brand has to do is to do a good job of brand packaging, stabilize product quality and try to improve brand pull.

So much has been said above, we would like to return to the topic of today’s first phase: bathroom brand whole house customization. In my opinion, it is because of the promotion of the concept of whole-house customization, bathroom brands began to get involved in whole-house customization. Here I will share my personal views.

As we discussed earlier, full bathroom customization is a pseudo-proposition in my opinion, because it is not the demand of most consumer groups, so the increment is limited.

So the brand wants to use the small space of the bathroom to pry the customer whole house customization space. In my opinion, this belongs to the small but broad category. What is the specific result? Not optimistic.

 

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First, let’s analyze the factory side of the brand.

Although the whole house customization seems to belong to the large home furnishing industry, at present, whether it is factory or retail, the whole house customization is a very high degree of digitalization.

To get involved in whole-house customization, first of all, for the brand factory, there must be professional staff and a team. If you just use the idea of doing bathroom cabinets and sanitary products, I think it is not good to do.

Because the whole house customization is the whole project thinking, rather than simply selling finished products, selling panels, selling to customers is a complete set of lifestyle and life philosophy, including solving the customer’s life pain points. For example, the storage problem of the living room and bedroom. This seems to be a problem that can be solved by a cabinet, but you must take into account the overall style of the home, the owner’s preferences, living habits and so on.

 

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Let’s analyze from the perspective of the bathroom dealer.

From the point of view of the terminal dealers, although the bathroom dealers operate relatively well, although corporatized operations, but there is a problem that we can not ignore, that is, most of the bathroom dealers’ stores are mom-and-pop stores.

Even if the corporatized dealers, it is difficult to get the store to do the whole house from a small bathroom service.

Because there must be a professional designer to do the whole project, and the terminal sales staff must understand the knowledge of the whole house. For the sales staff, there is no doubt that it adds a lot of difficulties. And the area of the store also has to increase a lot, otherwise, it can’t show a good image.

It is very difficult for the company-operated dealers to implement whole-house customization, let alone ordinary mom-and-pop stores. Therefore, the probability of losing out in the end dealer structure is already high.

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Another point is that the brand power of the bathroom brand is sufficient? Can you support the whole house of such products, so that customers buy?

In the minds of customers, your brand positioning is to do sanitary ware. Now cross-border do whole-house customization, professional? How about service? How is the quality?

I’d better find a professional brand to do it!

In today’s market segmentation, consumers are more and more recognized by the brand. Why choose a brand? Because the brand is actually equivalent to helping consumers first screen the market.

Earlier we analyzed the bathroom brand across the definition of the problems that may be encountered, so let’s analyze again the bathroom whole house across the definition of what kind of problems will be encountered?

As we said before, cross-border sanitary ware is through the means of risk and speculation, with small costs in exchange for large prices, so now the whole house customization should be how to do?

 

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First of all, we analyze from the brand side.

For the brand of a custom home, now basically the whole house custom can do, such as shoe cabinets, TV cabinets, closets, balcony cabinets, storage cabinets, etc., the whole house custom brand now also all do the cabinet before only do the cabinet brand now began to do the whole house custom.

Some capable brands, in addition to custom products, also integrated finished furniture, finished furniture + whole house custom combination to achieve a better-unified style.

Many brands that used to do finished furniture are now starting to do whole-house customization.

There are also some brands that are doing whole-house customization, and now they are integrating finished furniture into a complete set of furniture.

Therefore, the last remaining space in a home renovation is the bathroom.

Why is a small bathroom so difficult to get?

Because the bathroom products involve too many industries and categories, according to the author’s 13 years of experience in the bathroom building materials industry, we roughly list the bathroom products involved in which categories?

First of all, from the overall large bathroom link, involving water, electrical circuits, drainage three major aspects.

Once a link is out of order, it will affect the overall use and experience.

We will take the bathroom cabinet as an example.

Such as painted bathroom cabinets.

1. Cabinet class involves carpentry, dusting, polishing, painting and other processes.
2. The countertop is divided into the on-counter basin, under-counter basin, counter basin, integrated basin, ceramic basin, microcrystalline stone basin, etc. The material inside involves ceramic, stone, artificial stone, etc.
3. Bathroom cabinets involve the processing of lenses. It looks like an ordinary lens. If it is not done well, it will produce black edges and other after-sales services. And now many mirror cabinets or smart mirrors, and lights, smart switches and other accessories.
4. Faucets and drains involve hardware manufacturing, including various pipe fittings.
5. There are also drains connected with the basin drain, which belongs to the plastics manufacturing industry.

A bathroom cabinet involves the integration of so many industries and categories. In addition, ceramic manufacturing is an industry that integrates capital and technology.

So, why in the bathroom category, the whole bathroom of the big brands are not many, and the emerging bathroom brands are basically a single professional category. Because the whole bathroom brand products involved in the categories and industries are too wide, basically a certain industry. Do bathroom cabinets is to do bathroom cabinets, do ceramics is to do ceramics, do hardware faucets and showers is to do hardware faucets and showers. A variety of bathroom accessories, such as explosion-proof hoses, drains, angle valves, seemingly insignificant, but very important accessories, can be achieved industry classification.

Then you may say since there are brands and factories specializing in the production of different categories of products, then for the whole house brand, the centralized procurement of these quality brands or products is not it?

This is indeed the case. Centralized sourcing is not a problem as long as you have the appropriate talent and team. For whole-house brands, it is not a matter of investing money and a team to solve the problem.

 

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Then the problem will return to the terminal.

At present, the terminal of the whole house custom stores basically have a variety of styles of model rooms, but what is the core point of these model rooms to create? The core is to sell their main product category: custom + finished furniture.

Although there will be bathroom model rooms, the bathroom is often a space that is not given much attention. Because of the small proportion, what is the proportion of space in the whole house? Therefore, the terminal stores must first take into account the customer’s large space plan design when planning to make a plan, because these are real money.

Basically, after the whole house program is determined, the bathroom is often used as a bargaining chip.

Customers have the psychology of bargaining, how to deal? It is to let customers take advantage of the bargain!

In order to ensure the transaction rate, the store will generally be a separate quote for each category, such as how much the living room space custom + finished furniture, how much the bedroom, how much the kitchen, how much the bathroom, and so on.

Customers come to the whole house customization store. This shopping scenario is to buy custom products. Therefore, his focus is on custom furniture and finished furniture. The bathroom customer will generally think your store is not professional if the price is right. Just buy the full set at that. If it is not suitable, do not buy bathroom products.

When negotiating orders with customers, salespeople will generally give up the bathroom deal or raise the price of the bathroom to ensure that the main business deal. On top of the total price of the whole house and finished furniture, for example, add 2999 yuan, the bathroom is done for you. Some toilets are simply donated.

So bathroom products are half-bought and half-given away because their ratio is so small. Just like we spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a set of furniture, I like your smart trash can for a few hundred dollars. You originally wanted to sell this trash can. If the customer wants it, it is basically given as a gift to the customer, so that large orders can be signed smoothly and the customer can take advantage of it.

Besides the problem of the proportion of the order amount, there is another problem: professionalism! This is why many people are not interested in toilets.
As we said earlier, toilets involve three major technical issues: water, electrical circuits, drainage.
If it is a whole house, it is nothing but a design and installation problem, not a water problem. The installation of bathroom products needs another professional bathroom products installation. For the dealer, one more coordination will increase the risk of after-sales service. If the other spaces of custom products and finished furniture are good, but the bathroom products have problems, it will affect the overall sales.
Therefore, for the end dealer, the need to integrate more and more resources, the risk of after-sales service problems is also increasing. After all, sanitary products have water and electricity, there will inevitably be after-sales, which increases the service costs of stores. Therefore, this is the fundamental reason why whole house stores do not do well in sanitary ware.
Store sales staff do not want to cause this trouble. Store owners also think this problem is very troublesome, the price is not high, and the profit is not high. Might as well do their own custom main business, good customer service, maybe there will be a referral.
From these aspects of analysis, the whole house brand cross-border bathroom is actually like chicken ribs, tasteless, discarded.
Through the above analysis.
Bathroom brands are involved in the whole house customization.
Whole-house custom brands involved in doing sanitary ware.
Is it cross-border or can not cross the chasm?
What is your opinion?