Hafele’s future readiness with holistic home solutions is one of its core assets

It's understandable that as more individuals work from home, the need for home improvement items has increased. How much expansion have you seen, and how are you strengthening your products and innovation to make people's work from home lives a little easier?

The last two years of the pandemic gave rise to a new living trend called "cocooning," where people were forced to stay within their homes and create an environment around them that was conducive to living, working, relaxing, studying, and every other activity that needed to be done on a given day. Basically, the home was expected to recreate the settings of an office, playground, school, or even a restaurant when the lockdown conditions were extreme. While one may argue that this too could just be a phase or passing trend, it is hard to ignore the fact that people have now realised the importance of creating flexible living and working spaces within their homes with the expectation of a well-prepared future should they be forced into a similar lock-in situation. So, irrespective of whether the work-from-home trend stays alive or sees a transitional death, the perspective of the home has now changed forever.

Most people are now ensuring that their homes have at least one flexible area that can be converted into a home-office or at least be used for working for some hours during the day. Where there is the liberty of space in large homes to dedicate a room for this purpose, the challenges are minimal. But in smaller apartments where space is a growing challenge, the use of clever solutions comes in handy to apply multiple utilities to one given space. For example, Hafele’s Space Square Range of Transformable Furniture Solutions consists of space-optimizing bed fittings (like the Supernova or Aladino bed) that allow the bed to be folded vertically into a wall cavity, giving you the entire floor space to create a desk and chair set-up for your office calls during the morning and afternoon.

If you are a multi-tasker who can juggle between an early morning call and a quick breakfast, then Hafele’s Evolution table fitting can be your ideal partner. This clever solution allows you to pull the table from within a kitchen cabinet for work calls or family meals and then fold it back into the cabinet when not needed.

Hafele’s latest addition, the Alti table fitting, can raise work tables to any adjustable height as per your preference, giving you the flexibility to stand and work after long hours of sitting.

Another trend that is being noticed is the inclination of people to store more so that they don’t have to frequent the market too often. To support this trend, the need for larger storage spaces within kitchens is needed. Tall units are generally a clever answer to bulk storage requirements. They optimally use the vertical space within a kitchen, giving more storage possibilities within one compact unit. Hafele’s new tall unit storage solution can take up to 100 kg of load (20 kg per basket) at a given point of time – this can help you plan your grocery purchases significantly.

Finally, the need for a safe and hygienic environment within the home is topping the priority charts. Hafele’s engineered stone surfaces for countertops are designed for ease of maintenance and use; their composition materials lend inherent antibacterial properties, making these surfaces extremely hygienic and safe.

What is your product portfolio in India, and what is your most recent offer?

For many years now, Häfele has pioneered the way interior fittings are sold across the globe. Being a German company, our foremost concern has always been to offer our customers premium-quality products at competitive prices, paired with solutionbased services. In India, we are also recognised as the one-stop-solution brand for any home interior needs. This is owing to our vast product portfolio that includes door hardware (wood and glass), sliding solutions for doors and furniture, furniture fittings, kitchen solutions, digital locks, home appliances, lighting, interior surfaces, and bathroom fittings. These holistic solutions are backed by a strong service approach, which has over the years made Hafele the preferred partner for our different customer segments.

Our latest launches include:

A complete range of kitchen solutions that are engineered by Hafele and come with the assured Hafele quality. This range includes the Matrix Drawer and Runner systems, Free Flap Fittings, Metalla Furniture Hinges and Clever Storage Solutions like tall units, side pull-outs, narrow cabinets and corner units.

 

 

 

A floor-to-ceiling Sliding Solution called the Aluflex that can execute the most flexible applications within your home - be it an enclosure for a walk-in wardrobe or an attractive, life-sized wardrobe unit

 

 

 

 

Additions in colours to our in-house range of Premium Interior Surfaces – Terra. Terra was launched in 2021 and we have now added 3 new colours to this range to provide you with more options in design and applications

 

 

 

 

Customized sizes in our range of Aquasys Light Mirrors where we can offer our customers these mirrors in different finish frames as well as per the size requirements that they may have.

 

 

 

 

A comprehensive range of Digital Locks that include models with a host of security and access features along with the variety of executing different applications like main-door security, office-cabin security, access for hotel rooms etc.

What are the Latest Trends and Developments in the Kitchen Industry?

The kitchen industry these days is going through many developments. With the pace of consumers shifting from an on-site fabricated kitchen to factory-made modular kitchens, the kitchen industry is now accommodating a hybrid model – online and offline, enabling great consumer education as well as adding a lot of convenience to the consumer.

Where will the next phase of growth for your company come from?

For many years now, Hafele has enjoyed the strong brand position of a holistic solutions provider in India. We have ensured that we meet every demand that our customers may have for their home improvement project through our own product line as well as strategic brand alliances with our partners. This has enabled us to provide variety, flexibility, and good quality to our customers.

Our next motivation lies in strengthening our holistic brand proposition with a stronger focus on products that are developed or engineered by us, thereby giving our customers a holistic "Hafele" experience. With our new range of kitchen fittings products, along with our existing range of in-house premium appliances, lighting solutions, and home-grown Terra surface, we can now provide a complete kitchen to our customers that is truly "Hafele" in every way possible. We are now being recognised more and more for our strong and inherent competency in manufacturing, and people are trusting the products that are developed by us more and more owing to the Hafele Quality Standards that they bring with them.

Another area of focus for us is "service". Over the past many years, we have established different service formats to be able to provide a peace-of-mind experience to our customers. From designing services for kitchens, wardrobes, and lighting (that mark the very start of any home improvement project) that we offer at our showrooms, to creating detailed quotations for our customers during the purchase cycle, and right up to post-sales services like installation of our products (Meister Service), as well as managing queries or complaints through our in-house customer care team, service forms the very foundation of our interaction with our customers at every given step.

Our next endeavour in service is to be able to provide a customised experience to our clients where their exact requirements, needs, and wants are internalised by us and appropriate solutions are then presented that meet these expectations. As a new initiative, we are working on a concept called H2O, i.e., "Hafele to Order", which will allow customers to buy tailor-made solutions from Hafele with the highest quality standards and with a minimum order quantity that is as low as one piece. These solutions are largely based on aluminium structures and provide a high degree of compatibility with existing functionalities that Hafele offers currently within kitchen fittings, furniture fittings and sliding door solutions.

The growth strategies you have adopted to maintain your position in this global market?

I think one of the key strengths of the Hafele brand is its future readiness. We are a company that has always caused some disruption through innovation. Our growth comes from the investments that we make while looking forward to the future. For example, as a furniture hardware brand, lighting could not have been our first choice, but Loox today is the largest furniture light selling brand across the globe. Similarly, in India, we introduced the home appliances category in 2014 – again a deviation from our core business but a successful deviation nonetheless. Today, the Hafele Appliances brand is one of the most successful brands in home appliances in the Indian Sub-continent.

Hafele is also an agile company, which basically means that we have been very flexible in adapting to different markets across the globe rather than bringing a fixed business portfolio from our parent company in Germany. We appreciate and understand that the needs of every market could be very different from each other, and this has helped us to bring in products and solutions that will work in that specific market even if they are not part of our original portfolio.

What can we expect from Häfele India in terms of enhancing its brand identity and market positioning?

Hafele already enjoys a highly favoured brand position among the B-to-B community of customers in India. This is a result of our hard work towards building relationships with our partners and customers over the years through a consultative, solution-based business approach that is heavily backed by service.

We are also very well known among influencers and end-customers who associate with our brand strongly when it comes to kitchens and home appliances.

The next step is to bring our end customers closer to the thought that Hafele is a brand that provides holistic home solutions that can add value to every part of their homes. We are a brand that is definitely well known for its kitchen and appliance solutions, but we are equally good at door solutions, sliding applications, digital home security, interior surfaces, and home lighting. And most importantly, we are also a brand that provides 360-degree services to make the customer’s journey with us smooth, meaningful, and convenient.

What are your expansion plans? How many dealers and distributors do you have? Is there any new business alliances, collaborations, or expansion initiatives in the planning for Häfele?

Häfele India services its customers with a base of over 1300 employees, a wellnetworked franchise base of over 190 shops, along with over 500 direct dealers and90+ distributors who in turn cater to over 8000 satellite dealers. The subsidiary has a sophisticated logistics centre in Mumbai along with distribution centres in Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Colombo, respectively.

As a new initiative, we are working on a concept called H2O, i.e., "Hafele to Order," which will allow customers to buy tailor-made solutions from Hafele with high quality and one piece at a time. These solutions are largely based on aluminium structures and provide a high degree of compatibility with existing functionalities that Hafele offers currently within kitchen fittings, furniture fittings, and sliding door solutions.

What has been the response from non-metros?

In one word: phenomenal. As a trend in any growing economy, there is never any dearth of business potential for any industry, and India is still in a phase where its megametros are still booming and growing. In parallel, the smaller cities are catching up to the aspirational growth trends that have been set by the metros. For our industry too, the non-metros are adapting to newer ways of living, with more high-rise buildings coming up and real estate booming. This automatically provides us with a huge opportunity for our line of products, and we are actively expanding our reach and presence in these cities with more franchisee shops, dealer outlets, distributors, and our own sales employees.

What’s your secret sauce or competitive advantage which makes Hafele’s product unique?

Innovation. Hafele has always stayed ahead in bringing in new functionalities and risked challenging the old and proven technologies. Hafele has also brought in a lot of value addition to the overall consumer journey through its service-centric approach starting from enquiry to purchase of a product as well as post purchase services. Taking risks and staying ahead of its industry peers definitely gives Hafele an edge.

What do you hope to accomplish through Hafele Design Studio?

Häfele’s design showrooms are hubs of international home interior trends and cuttingedge designs presented in a world-class environment, where customers can see home solutions in their inherent applications. These showrooms function as a one-stop-shop for all home interior and improvement needs—from providing in-depth technical advice to kitchen and wardrobe designing services through a team of experts stationed at the showroom. This same approach to design, service, and functionality is also emulated in our franchisee-formats called the "Hafele Design Studios". The idea is to extend this world-class retail philosophy to different parts of the country through our Hafele Design Studios.