Midea and SCHOTT create white kitchen integration

Chinese appliance manufacturer "Midea" has successfully provided diversified products in China. Midea is adhering to the corporate spirit of pursuing **, and is looking for technical solutions that can meet its complex design needs, including new design and printing options, and color matching of different home appliances to meet the current "set design" trend. Midea and SCHOTT's technology and R & D team have communicated closely and found the best solution-using glass to design and manufacture.

1. Challenge

China's home appliance market is rising

For the home appliance market including ice-washing, kitchen appliances and color TVs, online retail sales reached 175.9 billion yuan in 2017, of which kitchen appliances reached 23 billion yuan, an increase of 55% year-on-year. In the context of double-digit growth and tens of billions of total sales, household appliance manufacturers need to stand out from the market competition with novel and unique features.

Note 1: (Data source: GfK-2017 China Electronics and Household Appliances Industry Report)

In China, the post-80s and post-90s have become the main consumer groups, and their high requirements for product quality are also reflected in the trend of the home appliance market.

The survey shows that more than 40% of Chinese consumers are willing to pay for home appliances.

Note 2: (Data source: quote news.cheaa.com)

Uniform colors and matching styles are becoming the mainstream of home appliances. Among them, white products are more and more popular and significantly higher than other colors. The preference rate of white home furnishings in first- and second-tier cities has reached 70%.

Note 3: (Data source: CBNData —— Insights into Chinese home style consumption preferences)

Midea, as a domestic ** home appliance company, has an insight into this market demand and also hopes to take this opportunity to enhance Midea ’s brand image in the ** home furnishing market. In mid-2017, Midea was devoted to the development of new kitchen appliances, which included challenging designs and colors, and presented delicate patterns on the control panel.

In addition, Midea also wants to launch a series of home appliances that match white to cater to the trend of "set design". The challenge with this design is that glass with different thicknesses and sizes appears the same white. Midea encounters a bottleneck in this technology and needs strong partners to solve this problem, and hopes to further reflect the high-grade design level while solving technical problems. To this end, Midea sought a feasible solution and technical support from SCHOTT.

2. Innovation

The SCHOTT flat glass technical team accepted this challenge. Its broad technical field and long-term accumulated professional skills can meet the requirements of Midea. After months of internal upgrades and testing, SCHOTT successfully solved technical challenges and responded to this challenge with the support of its powerful color mixing and printing technology.

Provide multi-color solutions-rich colors and designs to meet different fashion trends and requirements

Excellent quality and durable-with the highest temperature resistance and chemical resistance

"When developing ** kitchen appliances for the Chinese market, we hope that the colors of all products look uniform-we do not accept any color difference because we pursue **. We can only produce with the support of SCHOTT The products that our designers envision. ”— Joe Zou, representative of Midea

"Midea approached us not long ago and put forward challenging requirements. Through communication with our Sino-German global technical team, we successfully delivered the requirements of Midea."-Sam Zhou, SCHOTT Account Manager of Glass Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd.

3. The next step

Glass surface with stainless steel appearance-SCHOTT® MetalLook

Midea is also very interested in SCHOTT's other unique technologies, such as MetalLook, which can make the glass surface look like real stainless steel in addition to the advantages of glass material. This multi-level feature contributes to the diversification of design and can reflect the feeling of ** taste of home. In addition, Midea's Toshiba and joint venture brand AEG glass stoves, which have been launched in China, use SCHOTT's tempered glass materials-these household appliances are marked with the SCHOTT® trademark. Midea and Short jointly solemnly promised to have more cooperation in China in the future. Stay tuned ...