Steve Collinge interviews Simon Andersen, General Manager for GROHE UK.

Written by Steve Collinge - International speaker, thought leader, retail influencer and commentator, MD Insight Retail Group & Executive Editor Insight DIY.

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Simon Anderson, GM of the GROHE UK business and ask him the following questions.

GROHE is a well-known brand in the UK, but for those who don't know, please tell us more about the broader GROHE business?

GROHE is a leading global provider of complete bathroom solutions, and also offers kitchen sink and tap fittings. The brand continues to be a pioneer in the kitchen and bathroom industries and sets high standards for innovation, design and technological advancements. 

GROHE is a market leader in many European countries, in the UK there is a high prevalence of private label products, but the trend is following European standards making brands more important to retailers and end consumers. 

Since 2014, GROHE has been part of LIXIL Group, which specialises in making ground-breaking water and housing products that solve every day, real-life challenges. LIXIL’s expertise has enabled us to expand our product capabilities as a brand, allowing us to now offer complete bathroom solutions across brassware and ceramics and take a global approach to the latest innovations and technology. Our brand values centre around technology, design, sustainability and, above all, quality; something that consumers are seeking out now more than ever and is at the core of all our product innovations.

How has GROHE managed the unexpected challenges of 2020?

COVID-19 has of course been a challenge, which required difficult decisions. One of our steering principles is to put our people and their wellbeing first.  We were incredibly fortunate to be able to make the decision to remain working with no furloughed staff and make sure we were available to support our customers. It was encouraging to see the entire UK business come together. 

I am pleased to say that we have seen a significant bounce back in demand as consumers are spending more time at home and have turned their attention to tackling various home improvements and DIY projects. We’ve seen this across the KBB industry.

COVID has had a huge impact on the retail industry in 2020, who from a Home Improvement perspective do you think has managed the challenges successfully?

All of our retail partners have not only survived but succeeded in 2020. We continue to hear stories of retailers adapting to this new way of life. The increased consumer demand we are seeing proves that these efforts to deliver new solutions are paying off. 

Retailers have responded quickly to new market demands introducing new products in the hygiene space, for example; expanding their infrared portfolios.

We’ve also seen developments in click and collect accelerated, particularly to cope with the initial restrictions.  Retailers have strengthened digital resources to improve the accessibility of information for consumers. 

Let's talk kitchens, what do you believe are currently the most significant opportunities for the UK market?

As ever, consumers’ increasing desire for a connected, smart home in which various aspects of their life can be monitored, tracked and organised via their smartphone is generating lots of sales in the kitchen industry. At GROHE, we commit a lot of time to innovation within this market, particularly within the tap sector where we find products that optimise health and convenience reign supreme.  

Coloured kitchen sinks and taps are also growing in popularity and are expected to continue to become more readily accessible and specified in the home over the next 12 months. As a result of the industrial trend that is still prevalent throughout all areas of the home, black kitchen taps are being increasingly sought out by consumers and we see this becoming a staple of the modern kitchen in 2021.  

Another sector of the kitchen market that is developing as a result of consumers spending more time at home and taking on the role of improving their kitchen space themselves is quick fix solutions. At GROHE, we are really thinking about ways in which we can create easy-to-install products that cater to a customer who is not necessarily carrying out a complete renovation but still wants to make quick and impactful enhancements.

And what about bathrooms, what do you believe are currently the most significant opportunities for the UK market?

There are several key areas of opportunity in the bathroom that we are really honing our efforts on currently. For example, wall-hung toilets that save space and fulfil a desire for a minimalistic, clean aesthetic continue to be an area that we specialise in. Moving forward, we plan to completely change the way our industry thinks about these products - not only in front of the wall but behind it too. 

Smart toilets like GROHE Sensia Arena are beginning to be more understood by the UK mass market and consumers are starting to understand the value of the benefits they can offer from both a convenience and hygiene perspective. UK specific solutions such as half inch tails and Low pressure variants, emphasize our focus on UK needs. 

Perhaps the most poignant product category we are projecting to be significant for our brand is unsurprisingly around hygiene, particularly hands-free product solutions like our infra-red tap Bau Cosmo E. As infra-red taps require minimal, if any, human contact with the tap itself, they minimise the spread of germs and we predict that these products will therefore be in high demand for the hygiene-focused home of the future.

Hot taps and sparkling water taps seem to have reached a tipping point in the UK market, what are your thoughts on the development of this market?

The market for hot water taps has become more and more saturated in the last few years and so now it really has to come down to brands taking that next big leap to create points of differentiation that really bring benefit to the user, by incorporating unique features that provide resolutions to real customer pain-points. 

These include reassurance over safety by incorporating child lock features and applying cooling technology to the exterior surface of the tap. We also know that this trend is also making its way to the DIY market, with B&Q set to roll out GROHE Red in-store displays across selected stores.

In the filtered water tap market, the very latest advancements in design and technology are around connectivity and smart technology capabilities. Following suit with other smart and connected appliances in the kitchens industry, the key benefits focus on health and convenience. 

For example, our GROHE Blue Home still and sparkling filtered water tap utilises app functionality to allow homeowners to track and monitor their household water intake. Looking further ahead to new developments in this area, we expect voice activation and the use of an app to control the tap operation itself to come into play. 

Has the need for antibacterial or contact free products been an opportunity for your business?

Yes, absolutely. From the start of 2020, we have seen extraordinary demand for our touchless sensor products, achieving significant YoY growth. Products like our GROHE BAU Cosmo E infra-red tap have been at the forefront of this new surge of demand. They facilitate the important act of handwashing without the need for any human contact with the body or mechanisms of the tap itself. The battery-powered model makes installation simple and it has a long-lasting 7 year battery life too. This coupled with an accessible price point have been the key drivers for our growth in this sector.

 Sales of our award-winning Sensia Arena have been gradually increasing for a while now, but we can see its hygiene-optimising features such as automatic flushing, automatic lid opening and anti-bacterial coating are likely to generate far greater demand in the near future. 

Within the LIXIL Group I understand Grohe participates in the NetZero programme, can you tell me more about this?

Sustainability is not only at the heart of our product design but a practice that is woven into every aspect of our company. We use a 360-degree sustainability approach that incorporates employees, suppliers, customers, processes, products, as well as a corporate social contribution. 

We really started to make significant changes when we switched to using green electricity in July 2019 at all of our LIXIL EMENA production sites and German logistics centres. Following this, in April of this year, we announced our success of achieving carbon-neutral production globally, a target of which we were delighted to be one of the first leading sanitary manufacturers in the world to reach. 

Our next target, which is already well underway, is to replace plastic in our product packaging with more sustainable alternatives, which we hope to achieve next year. In fact, our target for next year is to have eliminated 35 million pieces of plastic packaging, a figure we are well on track to meet. 

I understand Grohe is now using 3D printing technology to manufacture products, sounds exciting, please tell me more?

We began our journey into 3D printing several years ago with an exploration into how the growing use of this new and innovative technology could be utilised within the bathroom space. This research then came to fruition in March 2019 when we unveiled the GROHE Icon 3D tap range, a beautifully designed collection of 3D printed taps produced by printing metal using a powder bed laser melting process, a unique material developed by our R&D team.

This manufacturing process not only allows us to create visual spectacles and masterpieces that would be impossible with traditional manufacturing methods but also sees us starting to move away from a make-take-waste model and begin the shift towards operating within a more circular economy. With the ICON 3D, our goal was to completely pare back the design of our Icon 3D taps, incorporating design details such as ultra-thin profiles and hollow interiors that both push the bathroom product design barriers and significantly reduce the amount of material required in the manufacturing process.

What plans do Grohe have for 2021 and beyond?

There will be some changes to our commercial approach commencing in 2021 which we hope will enable us to better serve individual customers and their needs within their respective channels. We have ambitious plans for DIY. We want to have the right products in the right place. That is why we are introducing the new DIY consumer range Quickfix, including products designed for the UK market that will allow fast and easy installation, while fully maintaining GROHE’s core values; quality, technology, sustainability and design.

We will continue to invest in sustainability in 2021 and bring more innovative GROHE products to the retail channel, building on the success from 2020. To bring all this together and support our retail partners on store level, we will also continue to work with GEM merchandising who provide an invaluable service to ensure visibility of GROHE.

Many thanks to Simon Andersen and the GROHE team for the above content. 

Steve Collinge is an international speaker, influencer, retail commentator and is Managing Director of Insight Retail Group Ltd and executive editor of Insight DIY. You can follow Steve on LinkedIn here and on Twitter here.