Hansgrohe: sustainability is not a policy - it's a way of life
What sustainability means for brassware and showering manufacturer Hansgrohe: It’s not a policy, more a way of life... says CEO Martin Mongan
At Hansgrohe sustainability is not a policy, it's a way of life and it has been for some 40 years, long before being 'green' became a corporate buzzword. Caring for the environment, thinking about a sustainable future and taking actions that we know are the right way to behave is part of the company's DNA. This ethos extends to our products that are designed to give water pleasure while minimising consumption and reducing costs.
It is one thing knowing this but quite another communicating it to the market, because what does sustainability really mean? Ask five people and you'll get five answers.
The FX Design Seminar round table on sustainability a little while ago [and published in FX September] illustrates this point, and proves how valuable it is to share views from within the market place. When you sit with professionals for a no-holds barred conversation you learn more than you ever would from any day-to-day contact, and all those taking part presented different viewpoints. From the discussion it was clear that the overriding conundrum is how to successfully balance sustainability with style, value and user experience.
We understand that the design process is more than simply creating a look; it is providing an efficient, functional space tailored to the needs of the user. While interior designers may not be interested in the details of BREEAM, they do want to recommend products that have style and will perform. Performance and a great user experience are particularly important for us as a brassware and showering manufacturer. But our conundrum is to balance this with sustainability, as through their daily use our products will continue to consume energy and cash.
So the concept of a lifetime value, compared to merely being concerned with initial outlay, is valid. This is driving a change in mindset and focusing specifers and buyers to view total cost over time instead of just the product's purchase price. Clients are increasingly demanding more, and lifetime value is now a greater consideration, particularly when you factor the expense of plumbers/contractors having to revisit a site, or a hotel room out of action for a night. Designers, developers and investors are starting to realise that the real cost of products is actually built into years 3, 4 and 5 when low-price, low-quality products could start to go wrong. Our message to designers and specifiers is to do your homework beforehand and check the brand reputation, manufacturing philosophy, guarantees and WRAS certifications on the actual products being specified to ensure that you and your client are protected.
Sustainable design has to be about great-looking and working products that are also environmentally responsible. It has to be about the performance and user experience. Sadly there are many suppliers that put restrictors into their handsets just to reduce water. This does the market no favours: it harks back to the early eco movement of a brick in the cistern and perpetuates the myth that low flow equals poor performance.
The sustainable approach incorporated into product development at Hansgrohe is holistic, along with exploring the users' behaviours and interaction with the product. This results in innovative archetypes like the Axor Starck Organic mixer. It uses an ingeniously designed spray of 90 individual outlets, which not only delivers a new industry benchmark of just 3.5ltr per minute, but also gives greater skin coverage and soft spray for improved performance and increased user enjoyment. No compromise, just clever sustainable design.
But it takes more than simply having the right products. You can have the best-quality, sustainable product, with the best design, but if you're not offering service to customers through support and communication then the business will not succeed.
As a business we invest heavily in understanding the needs of our customers and work hard to ensure they understand how we meet those needs.
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do and our values and standards determine how we do it. We are so proud of our values and our commitment to no-compromise sustainable products and can be almost evangelical about it. There is no downside. Selling more EcoSmart products is a win for Hansgrohe, the end consumer and the project stakeholders.
I hope that the round-table FX Design Seminar events will continue as we have a commitment to listen to all segments of the market. We also hold regular retailer panels with around 10 customers every quarter and these help to drive our business. It's more challenging in the project arena as the global nature of the business means that customers are less keen to share their views, whereas retailers are only concerned with their own geographical region. We are listening and are keen to understand what matters to specifiers.
We recently conducted an interior design panel, which also provided some fascinating insight into how we can save them time and offer added security with their challenges on projects.
It is vital to us that we continue to get feedback and a high level of interaction. Thank you to all those who took part in the Design Seminar - and let's keep talking.
