Bath Fitting Industry - & Design Conundrum

Analysing the designs of the bath fitting industry, particularly in faucets and taps, one will usually notice the similarity between the well-known brands (Jaquar, Cera, Hindware…) and the lesser-known regional brands. Why is this so in this industry?

The core reason might be a herd mentality of following the leader. Whenever there is a well-known brand that sells a product or a design, it charges its own premium (which makes sense as the premium is for the brand). But the designs that are being copied or developed with minor differences are not only sold at cheaper prices but are also claimed to be at par with the branded fittings.

We will surely discuss the quality differentiation in this industry and the entry barriers in subsequent articles. But let's focus first on designs.

The designs of well-known brands are their own developed designs, which need a significant investment in R&D and finally making them relevant for every bathroom that will use them. But once it is in the market and goes viral, it will take only 10 days for other regional brands to make a replica of it with minor changes. They will then relaunch it in the market with their robust distribution and at much more affordable prices.

What about customers?

A customer who is looking for a brand will always go for the brand, but a customer who can be persuaded will definitely be convinced by the shop owner to take another brand instead of what they were initially looking for. Many might think that if we take brands, we will get good after-sale service. Yes, no doubt service will be there, and the premium feel will be there too. But if you are sitting at a shop and the shopkeeper tells you that for this regional brand, they will send their personal plumber to fix the fitting if any issue arises within 2 hours, while if you take a branded product, they might take 24-48 hours to come and might charge more than what the product actually costs. What will you prefer? Obviously, the one which the shopkeeper is confident in.

This is what is happening in the market and helping the regional brands to get their position in the market. But wait, how many regional brands are there?

10, 100, 1000, 10000… Undefined, we cannot count them. All of them are doing the same things, with the same costing, same margins for retailers, and same offerings. So here comes the problem. Is it very easy to enter this industry? That we will discuss in subsequent articles. And what is the maximum capacity of any retailer to keep the regional brands? Obviously, they might not be keeping more than 3 regional and 2 known brands. But then what about other brands? How will they sell in the market? Don't worry, there is plenty of market left; you will be able to make it through. And this is the only reason we will see 2 known brands and 3-4 regional brands, and that too different regional brands at different shops even though they are in a single market.

Coming back to design confusions. So are all the designs dead in the bath fitting industry, or is making new designs the work of leaders only and not regional brands, or does no one want to make it (we are just behind money, we will copy what is trending)? Can a company survive by marking its USP as different designs? The answer is yes. When a company is not following the leader and making its own designs, there will be two advantages: first, they will get a unique position in the market which cannot be replaced by others giving cheaper products, and second, if consumers like the designs, they will start demanding them and since nobody else is making it, demand automatically comes to you.

So yes, we cannot say designs are dead here; they are just being copied. Any new company can survive based on their unique designs.

We at PRP bath fittings do not run behind unique designs (as it is not our core purpose). Our sole aim is quality first. We want our customers to look at the fittings with confidence and say if we are buying PRP then it is quality only.

Thanks for being patient and reading this small effort to understand this industry.