Text/Pan Chunhua
The ceramic tile market capacity is hundreds of billions, and the home furnishing market is trillions!
After more than 30 years of rapid and disorderly expansion and development, the ceramic tile industry has already triggered the inevitable marginal line of comprehensive overcapacity. It is a foregone conclusion that the industry will decline past the peak and head towards the second half of the development parabola! The ceramic tile industry is anxious across the board, and seeking new breakthroughs has become a matter of life and death.
The market is weak and there has been no breakthrough in panel materials for many years. The competition among home products made of glass or resin or even natural stone panels is fierce. There is no room for profit squeeze and new ideas cannot be invented. The home panel materials industry is in urgent need of reform...
Stone slab and large slab materials, as a kind of ceramic material that can be used as home countertops across borders, have excellent basic physical properties such as acid and alkali resistance, corrosion resistance, and resistance to stains. They also have a colorful and elegant texture. Texture display - its emergence has given ceramic manufacturers and the home panel material industry a dazzling dawn!
As a result, we have seen slate manufacturing companies springing up like mushrooms after a rain. When the epidemic situation just eased, they bloomed and grew freely, showing a model of who can compete with each other to dominate the screen.
However, in the face of a trillion-level market pie, and in the face of a swarm of peers rushing from a narrow market of hundreds of billions into a trillion-level market, after the influx, I suddenly felt enlightened and then became confused again. , as conscientious media people, we have to give a warm reminder: before taking action, you need to be calm and sober!
As Mr. Li Jian, the chairman and president of Action Education, a listed company, said: "Any unnecessary actions by an enterprise are a waste of costs and resources!" Therefore, before taking action, you must have an accurate vision and judge the situation. Make sure you hit it right!
Back to thinking: Ceramic companies choose to use slate to enter the cross-border home furnishing field and tap into the trillion-level home furnishing market. What is the core and essence of it? If you don't think clearly, even if you catch the big trend at the beginning and make some small gains, you will quickly lose in the rapidly changing market environment and the current business war that is maturing at a doubled speed and completing the division of the market structure.
(1) One of the sharp tools, its hard-core quality
So, what is the essence?
I thought it was the rock slab itself. Blacksmithing requires hard work, and quality is the foundation.
Firstly, in the home furnishing market, slate is a kind of facing board.Materials exist, which require processing and subsequent combination production, rather than finished products that go directly to end consumers. As slate is a material rather than a finished product, its sales still need to rely on home furnishing brands to finally reach the market. In other words, no matter how good your channel resources are, if you lack the quality, innovation, performance and other advantages of the product itself, the huge market competition is like duckweed without roots.
Secondly, it is very simple. When slate enters the home furnishing market, its sales model and channels will inevitably undergo fundamental changes. It is reported that there are currently about 50 domestic slate production lines with a daily production capacity of about 300,000 square meters. Nearly 80% of such a large production capacity has directly entered the home furnishing field, rather than traditional ceramic tile sales channels.
If some of the ceramic tile channel sales can directly reach the end-user ordinary consumer groups (for example, if you buy the ceramic tile materials yourself, and the decoration company is responsible for laying the tiles), then it is unlikely that large rock slabs, which are used as home countertop panel materials, can be bought back alone. Home right? It’s very simple. When you buy a table at home, will you first buy a piece of countertop material, move it back and cut it yourself, and then buy a shelf to install it? Even if you want to personalize it, it will be like choosing a pattern for a kitchen countertop. After choosing the materials, you will eventually buy it home as a finished product, right?
Since it is a material rather than a finished product, the quality, performance and innovation of the material itself are likely to have the most direct market impact!
In fact, after the market actually went through the initial round of short-lived hand-to-hand combat, a simple winner or loser was determined. As early as when the vocabulary of slate came into China, its initial distinction was to separate it from the big slab. Why? It is because there were some problems in the processing of early large boards, that is, quality problems. This problem once caused the market promotion of big boards to encounter strong obstacles, and even a large amount of negative feedback came in, causing a great impact.
At that time, large boards were circulated into the market and participated in the melee. In just a few months, everyone had discovered inevitable quality flaws: the strength and toughness were not enough, and the edges collapsed during processing. For this reason, various manufacturers are silent on this, and a large number of sales are also cautious about it. But behind closed doors, almost all production technicians are engaged in a tough battle to adjust the formula.
Soon after, the concept of slate also entered the market, and this concept was first opened at the sales port. There is currently no conclusion on the standard conceptual distinction between rock slabs and large slabs, but the relatively unified consensus in the industry mainly lies in: in terms of superiority of subsequent processing performance, those that can be cut and processed at will and fired at high temperatures above 1200 degrees are called For rock slabs.
To understand it from a conceptual level, it shows the importance of the quality of the rock slab itself!
(2) The second weapon, functional innovation
Everything comes back to its origin, and the great truth comes to simplicity.
In fact, many essential things and principles are simple and pure. To tap into the trillion-dollar market, just like dominating the hundreds of billions market, not only quality cannot be avoided, but product innovation is also inevitable! In particular, existing as materialsRock slabs, even more so.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the core essence of why slate can cross over into the home furnishing field and join this trillion-level home furnishing market lies in its identity as a new material and its "performance" compared to the original materials. new".
As a ceramic material, its acid and alkali resistance, corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, and stain resistance have more properties than the previous artificial quartz stone, natural stone, and glass in the field of home countertop materials. Advantages new features.
I remember Dr. Yin Hong once said at a technical forum: "Stone slabs are most likely to be functional and decorative as a whole." The functionality mentioned here, I understand, does not only refer to rock slabs. As a home countertop, the board has the load-bearing function and the basic performance advantages of ceramic materials, and it also has other features such as "antibacterial, acid and alkali resistance".
You must know that the emergence of rock slabs was "standing on the shoulders of giants". In the past two years, functional tiles that were once hotly debated in the industry, such as "negative ion tiles", "energy bricks", "heating tiles", "self-cleaning tiles", etc., have various functions that can be realized on ceramic tiles. That means it's also possible on rock slabs. In this way, by superimposing many slate products with the above functions, will it be even more powerful to enter the large home furnishing market?
Just imagine, if your dining table countertop is not only easy to care for, easy to clean, and looks classy, but also continuously releases negative ions into the living room, will it be more attractive to those who pursue health? desire? If your kitchen countertops were not only easier to clean and maintain and resistant to high temperatures, but also had obvious antibacterial effects, would you be more willing to pay for them?
(3) The third weapon, true beauty
As a panel material, appearance is of course also an indispensable core requirement.
Among the aesthetic elements that humans pursue, natural elements from nature have always been the almost eternal pursuit of aesthetic elements in the home environment.
From stone to wood, from plants to animals, whether it is a direct application of these things or imitation of materials, almost since the beginning of the activity of building and building homes, it continues to this day.
It is as if the textures and colors of ceramic tiles have been imitating natural stone, natural wood, and even various animal leather textures. The direct benchmark for slate is natural stone.
Whether it is a matte simple rock style, a mirror marble style, or a soft, waxy texture style, we are endlessly pursuing the road of getting closer to the texture and texture of natural stone. Therefore, “digital inkjet, glaze sprayVarious simulation products such as "fabric", "Zhenshi", "semi-through body" and "full body" are emerging in endlessly.
The same applies to this concept when placed on a rock slab. If quality determines life and death, and function determines the future, then appearance determines the market. In the field of home countertops, the appearance of slate can undoubtedly directly affect its sales volume. Whether you like this color or not, you’ll know after just a few glances.
Let’s take a look at a classic case in the industry—Nobel’s “king bomb” nugget weapon product.
Take the world-renowned brand Nobel, which has refreshed the standard of "top slate" at this Tanzhou exhibition, as an example. The brand's new product released this time - Nobel's full-body antibacterial slate, can be said to be perfect in one step. , this product is a king fried product integrating quality, functional innovation and ultimate texture. Look at its ultimate pursuit and display of quality, functional innovation, and imitation of patterns, colors, and textures of slate products.
Since 2017, Nobel’s 1600×4800mm ultra-large size slate has been the world’s premiere, achieving the highest specifications of ceramic sheets at that time, and it continues to this day; in July 2020, Nobel launched the first full-body antibacterial slate, once again establishing the “ Top with rock slab” the highest standard.
Let’s first look at Nobel’s pursuit of rock slab quality.
Picture: Nobel slate is used in the facades of five-star hotels in Australia and high-end residences in Türkiye
As a world-famous ceramic tile brand, Nobel's pursuit of quality has always been craftsman-level. As we all know, its series of porcelain polished tiles has reached the 5.0 slate era after several upgrades. As industry leaders and experts said in their speeches at this Tanzhou Exhibition: The release of Nobel's 5.0 series of full-body porcelain tile slate products has once again refreshed the quality standards of slate slabs and set a benchmark for slate slabs.
In order to achieve this "top quality slate" quality, the first set of slate production equipment was introduced in 2015, including an Italian 44,000t ultra-large tonnage press and other internationally advanced equipment. The instantaneous pressure of this ultra-large tonnage press is 44,000 tons, which is equivalent to the steel of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Its density, quality, and hardness are all amazing, and it can basically completely solve the problem of brittleness and hardening of rock slabs.The problem of easy breakage.
Let’s take a look at the functional innovation of Nobel Slate.
It is reported that the Nobel Prize-first slate is made of high-quality environmentally friendly raw materials, and is added with safer nano-inorganic antibacterial agents, which are broad-spectrum antibacterial, safe and non-toxic, and can effectively and permanently remove all kinds of germs.
The product has applied for two antibacterial invention patents and has been tested by national authoritative institutions. The antibacterial rate against common pathogenic bacteria (E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus) in daily life can reach more than 99% within 24 hours. The antibacterial ions are sintered and solidified in the slate at high temperature to maintain the stability and durability of the antibacterial performance and long-lasting antibacterial effects. The porcelain surface is wear-resistant and high-temperature resistant, and can be in direct contact with food. It can be used for daily food processing to reduce bacterial growth and protect the health of your family.
▲Nobel Antibacterial Slate Antibacterial Performance Test Report
Finally, let’s take a look at the simulated appearance of Nobel slate.
In March 2020, Nobel teamed up with 3 countries, 5 major institutions, and a team of top domestic and foreign experts to establish a project team of more than 300 people. It lasted more than 700 working days, invested hundreds of millions of yuan in research and development funds, and pioneered and exclusively launched "Intelligent texture technology" allows rock slabs to truly achieve a three-way integration of color, texture and material.
This product achieves: surface, back, side, color, texture, material, all-over patterns on three sides, creating a high-quality appearance with all-round patterns, colors and textures without blind spots. The all-over texture that is consistent on the outside and the inside, and the vivid colors that are comparable to natural stone, open up the last boundary between natural stone and artificial slate!
Today's science and technology is highly developed, and production technology can generally satisfy the needs of simulated patterns, colors, and textures. If there is still a gap between natural stone and rock slabs in terms of patterns, colors, and textures, it must be the gap in "the pattern penetrates the entire body." However, Nobel's "intelligent texture full-body technology" leads the world in full-body technology, creating a full-body "prosperous beauty" that is truly comparable to natural stone.
Nobel Slate Technology Milestone
2011
Nobel Porcelain Polishing 1.0
Opening the era of marble porcelain surface;
2013
Nobel Porcelain Polishing 2.0
Porcelain surface and digital inkjet penetration technology
Create an era of unglazed digitalization;
2016
Slate Porcelain Polish 3.0
Porcelain surface materials, multi-composite decoration technology
Multi-dimensional all-over fabric technology;
2017
Nobel Slate 4.0
Launched 1600×4800mm
Oversized rock slabs;
2020
Nobel slate 5.0 full body
Really realize the three-way integration of color, texture and material.
Did you see it? Ceramic tile companies are tapping into the trillion-dollar home furnishing market. Did Nobel give us a good example? Nobel Slate aims to become "the world's best decorative products service provider". From quality to functional innovation to impact-resistant appearance, Nobel’s “rock top” is a benchmark.
Many times, when faced with a suddenly broad market and a whole new world, both companies and individuals will inevitably feel confused for a moment. However, the essence remains unchanged despite all changes. For ceramic companies that want to rely on rock slabs to tap into the trillion-dollar home furnishing market, we return to the essence to discuss it. In the end, we still have to work hard on slate products and lay a solid foundation in product quality, product innovation and product appearance. Only when this essential foundation is solid can we have a gold-mining weapon!
Opportunities and challenges coexist, and risks and opportunities coexist. Faced with the explosive development of slate and the trillion-dollar home furnishing market that is suddenly opening up before our eyes - as a ceramics company, are you ready with your sharp tools?
Author: Pan Chunhua
