There is no Bologna exhibition this year, let’s talk about what we should do.
Bologna Exhibition should be a god-like existence in China’s ceramic industry. Especially in the early days, we went to the Bologna exhibition like a pilgrimage, so it had the glory of its past. But what about today, we can continue to analyze.
※This article is compiled from the theme sharing by Liang Xueqing, general manager of Ouwen Lai Brand Management Center, at the "2020 Ceramic Tile Trend Sharing Conference".
Bologna Exhibition has brought us the final word on many product trends in the entire modern architectural ceramics industry in China, including products, technology, design, culture, display and a series of things. Because we all look at where the latest things are in the world, and then how to improve ourselves.
Going to the Bologna Exhibition every year has become a habit for us for many years. We have to go every year and see it every year. Whether it is useful or not, we have to see it. Because our mentality is: Where is the distance between us and this world? What can we do? What if you can't do it? Only after seeing (the Bologna exhibition) did I feel relieved.
The Bologna Exhibition has been held for so many years, and this time of year is "Bologna time". As a result, this year's "Bologna time" is in China. In fact, in the minds of many people, this "Bologna time" is just like the Spring Festival travel of our generation of ceramic people - everyone is rushing to Bologna. Many times, old friends and people we can't see in Foshan are so far apart. It can be seen in Bologna and it is very convenient to find people, so it is like Spring Festival travel.
The "Spring Festival Transport" is in our traditional genes. In the early days, due to poverty, people who went out to make a living rushed home during the New Year. In fact, the characteristics of the industry are the same. Ten or twenty years ago, people went to Bologna to see the exhibition because of poor technology. What we want is Italian technology because we lack it. But when it comes to using these technologies, we really didn’t want to make products like Bologna, Italy. We just wanted the technology to improve ourselves and make something we thought was good at the time.
Five years ago, our technology improved, and we reached a stage where I think we were at a stage of poor design. In fact, we feel the same way about the mainstream products sold in the Chinese market more than five years ago and the mainstream products sold internationally - there is a huge gap. Because including the Ouwen Lai brand, we have been exporting for 21 years, but the products we make in the Chinese market are completely different from the products we make abroad. Why? Because products that are leading, popular, and easy-to-sell internationally are “acclimated” to the Chinese market. Because consumers’ consumption cognition and aesthetic cognition are different. But all this began to change five years ago, and products in the entire domestic market began to become international. We can see that in the past five years, products in the Chinese market have begun to synchronize with Italian products abroad and can become consistent. Why has Owen Lai been able to launch it in the Chinese market so easily in the past five years? I think it’s because we have just iterated some of the advantageous products we have made abroad and found them very suitable in the Chinese market. We didn’t make too many changes. can adapt to the needs of this market.
So at the current stage, if we still go to the Bologna exhibition, are we still poor? Where are we poor? I think we are now at this bottleneck, and what is lacking is front-end creativity. In fact, our current technical level is not bad, and our design style is also in sync with the world. However, in terms of front-end creativity related to development, we are still at a disadvantage. Many times, when we look at a product, we just see whether it can be improved and whether it can provide some inspiration. We all say that when we look at the Bologna Exhibition, we look at its creative capabilities and attitude towards making products.
Coming to 2020, there is no more "Bologna time". The most recent impression we can see of Bologna is the Bologna Exhibition in 2019. One trend we see is this: the centralization of product trends is becoming increasingly weak. When I was watching the exhibition in 2019, I said, "There is no trend in Bologna this year, but it is the biggest trend." I wrote an article like this at the time. Product trends are no longer concentrated.
In addition, there has been a comprehensive differentiation in the entire design theme. In the past, what we might have seen in the exhibition were cement, stone, or some kind of metal being the dominant phenomenon in the entire exhibition. Starting from 2019, there is no more. Because this is a comprehensive differentiation, you may see many things. , metal, wood, cement, etc. are all available, relatively balanced, no one is particularly prominent and important.
In fact, since 201What we feel after seeing Italy in 9 years is that to what extent the entire industrial technology has reached now, we will find that from a technical perspective, the technology generation capability has entered the micro era, and we have not seen a very clear, iterative iteration that is completely different from before. Same boundaries.
There is another one. In fact, we can see that large specifications have become common from 2019. This is no longer a feature, but a standard feature.
For us, looking at Italian products today, our design and technology have reached a certain level. What I personally appreciate about them is that they have a strong ability to think about the cultural and creative origins of products. Because (Owen Lai) will go to some design companies in Italy to deal with them every year. They will think about the design source of a product, the design enlightenment, and some changes they have experienced during the design process, to think about the entire product framework, to the final product. They all have a very clear and complete idea of implementation. This is not done through post-planning, but in early product design, we already have this idea to trace cultural origins. This is a thinking ability.
We will feel that a product is very comfortable and good. What’s so good about it? It lies in their ability to grasp the subtle physical sensations of products, including the color they see, the feel they feel, and some effects on the surface. These are some subtle differences between imported bricks and most domestic bricks. Another point is that in recent years, we have a strong ability to catch up with technology, but the latest technology still comes from Italian sources. This kind of emergence is because Italy has a very strong ability to determine the direction of technology and knows exactly what direction to go next. These three points are my appreciation for Italian products.
For now, it may not be a good thing that "Bologna Time" has pressed the pause button during the epidemic. In the past, ceramic companies were used to looking at Bologna first and then coming back to make products, but today they don’t have to look at it. It’s like a weaning period for innovation. They have to start their own brains and think independently. What does the market look like? How should the product go? What to do in the future? No one needs to be told the answer. Over the years, we have become accustomed to Bologna telling us directly what the “answer” is. So I say that pressing this "pause button" may not be a bad thing, because in this way we will look at ourselves independently.
Back to the product itself. Usually product managers will do two things, one is to determine market trends, and the other is to find focus.
Different people look at product trends differently, because the focus is different from every angle, whether it is far, near, current or future, so look at Expecting to give birthThe trends in product interpretation are also different.
As a ceramic company, when we talk about products now, we are no longer just talking about the product, but more importantly, we are talking about the system capabilities of the product. I think that when a product comes out, you don’t just have to make a good product. There is more in-depth processing, services and complete product output. A complete product system is what this era needs.
I will deconstruct and think about a trend from points, surfaces, bodies, and fields.
"Point" is the origin of a product. In fact, what we talk about most is the origin of the product. How is a product made? What is the best way to do it? What should we do to keep in line with current fashion trends? This is looking at it from the starting point.
Currently, the "point" of the product is more about vertical depth. We look for differentiation, and the characteristic of differentiation is that it must be professional - a product selected in a defined battlefield is professional enough to ensure that it is the "leader" in this area and will definitely win.
If you look at the product itself from a vertical perspective, there are several aspects: product theme, industrial feel, technological breakthroughs, etc.
As for product trends, from the product point of view, what we must accept is that there are no new large-span product themes, including stone, cement, metal, etc., which are all familiar themes to us. Are there any new species emerging? No. The only "new" thing now is making the specifications bigger and bigger. Precisely because the specifications are getting larger and larger, stone-like materials with large textures and strong jumping feel are more popular at the moment, which adapts to the visual needs of the trend of increasingly larger product specifications.
In terms of prototypes of product themes, everyone is constantly pursuing scarcity. In fact, the same is true for design. The scarcer something is, the more differentiated it is and the more value it embodies.
In terms of the entire product theme, from marble tiles, modern bricks to now rock slabs, all the way through, from the early days, stone or other natural materials were directly "copied" and "moved back" to become bricks, and now the same A theme will add a lot of humanistic creativity and human interaction design to it. Like what Teacher Wei Hua shared just now, it is to infiltrate many humanistic elements into natural materials and then move people. We say that products have temperature because there are human emotions in them. If we bring back pure natural elements, it will only be cold and without temperature. Therefore, the combination of natural materials and humanistic creativity has become the axis of the evolution of current product themes.
We often talk about products becoming more and more refined. However, today’s emphasis on product fineness has exceeded how much the resolution has been improved. Inkjet machine resolutionIt is a simple concept of how high the efficiency is. "Product precision" is not a simple simulation. This has not reached the scope it should be. The focus should be on the product's ability to reflect the story. For example, can the traces that have settled over many years, the scratches left by walking, and the feeling of the sun hitting the stone in the morning be restored on the product? Being able to incorporate very subtle considerations such as changes in material color and texture during a certain period of time into the product, I believe that this product is pragmatic and has sophistication.
Nowadays, black, white, gray, and plain colors have become something that every household will do. When designs are all chosen within these categories, where is the difference? One of the things that Italy inspires us about is the way the product feels. The product feel is how to use craftsmanship to create a body feel, emphasizing the affinity and comfort of the ceramic tile contact surface. Owen Lai often studies the feel of products. We hope to have professional theories to support our research in this area. Therefore, we have found the most professional tactile experts in China to conduct research in this area and study how to Improve people's pleasure on the touch surface, and build exclusive product barriers on the product through this.
Currently good products, or products that are very expensive on the market, have a miniature three-dimensional surface that uses a lot of craftsmanship and superimposition, and then combines with the texture design to reflect the richness of the product. Sense of quality. Italy is very particular about product details, because the real sense of quality comes from details. In fact, when domestic copycat factories make the same product, they can produce the same product in appearance, but the details are far from the original level of others. This is the fundamental difference.
So, how to do the details?
What was done most in the past was the visual channel, that is, what the eyes see, such as design changes in textures. Now, in addition to the visual channel, we have also opened up the tactile channel, which is to match the texture bite through process design, which is a very important ability. Many Chinese companies visit Italian design companies and just buy a design file and then do it themselves. But why are the final results different from those made in Italy? The biggest reason is that they don’t know anything about this design except the texture design. There is still a lot of blank space to study in terms of the path matching of craftsmanship and how to integrate it with the texture design. This is the attention to detail. I think the difference lies here.
Another one, looking at technology from a trend perspective, many process technologies can indeed provide good methods and means for the expression of details, such as digital functional glazes, digital inks, etc. that have been studied in recent years, which can help a lot of design things. Complete the expression. For example, the texture of color. The color should have texture. The surface of a brick used to be purely a change in color. Now after technology upgrades, every part of a brick can have changes in light and shade.Each part may not be the same. There is also the shaping of the surface texture of the ceramic tiles. The three-dimensional design we often talk about does not mean making a mold, but integrating the texture with the texture design. Modern craftsmanship has achieved the pursuit of details, and I think product possibilities will become more and more abundant and better and better.
What I just said is to look at the product from a starting point. After making a piece of brick, you also need to consider which side the brick will be attached to in the future. This “face” is the aspect of product trends. Why is your face different from other people's faces? This is your recognition. Culture, style, color gamut, function, etc., all involve the trend image to be captured when making products.
In terms of style, the current style is already diversified, and people do very little complicated things, and they are all about simplicity.
There is also the "Chinese element" that I hear the most today. "Chinese elements" is not only an industry trend, but a unique trend in the Chinese market. For so many years, we have been localizing international culture, which means that we have brought some good foreign culture into China, not to accept it in its entirety, but to make it more suitable for China and easier for people to accept. Now, I slowly discovered that we have entered another trend - the internationalization of Chinese culture, which is to refine many Chinese culture and elements and combine them with international aesthetic vision and fashion design language.
No matter what kind of Chinese elements, it does not mean that what was brought back and directly used in the past dynasties is Chinese culture. Culture must be iterated. Where does this iteration come from? The visual development of the Song Dynasty is now in line with contemporary aesthetics. It must have inherited its cultural symbols and made innovations, using international and fashionable design language to turn it into something that everyone finds good-looking. This will have a unique advantage for Chinese companies, because based on the Chinese market and Chinese culture, we have unique confidence. Some time ago, I was surprised to see Hollywood’s understanding of Chinese culture. Watching Disney's "Mulan" movie, I feel that foreign friends understand why our Chinese vision is like this? Although they are all the same Mulan, the taste and essence are completely different. They can shoot the scene very well, but their cultural understanding and emotional resonance are different from ours. Therefore, this is supported by the cultural confidence of Chinese enterprises.
From the perspective of "face", the innovations we make in terms of elements and functions are actually just cutting out a face, and the product is actually a group put together., this cut is to cater to the consumer trend. Consumers are all diverse, but they have some common characteristics. A new product is not made by a certain R&D personnel to create some new technology. The most important thing is that the technology of the product can serve aesthetics and function. Only aesthetics needs you, and your technology comes in handy. This is the best result. This is also provided to consumers after understanding their needs. This is the catering aspect of consumption.
I just talked about "points" and "faces", now let's talk about "body". What I understand as "body" is category. There are indeed many different large categories in the ceramic tile industry. However, each category such as marble tiles, modern bricks, and rock slabs is not made by one company. It is a multi-dimensional aggregation of the industry ecological chain, brand culture, and countless brands.
When we make products, we also need to look at the opportunities in this category. In the past ten years, from marble tiles to the popular rock slabs, we have basically reached the stage where the first-mover advantage has come to an end. The next question is about the advantage of being a latecomer. Where are the opportunities? What I talked about before was the issue of yes or no. Compared with the first-mover advantage, the advantage of a latecomer is that there is no cost of trial and error, the technology will not deviate, and with the promotion of resources, this will lead to catching up.
As a "new species", rock slabs are already transforming. Rock slabs do not have much impact on traditional sectors because they are in the incremental market and occupy the top dividends. We have seen a large amount of resources and funds entering this sector, promoting rapid iteration of products. What may be thin today may be even thinner tomorrow.
In addition, looking at the traditional marble tiles and modern tiles, they are fighting in the traditional market segments. This kind of fighting will have more obvious advantages for leading brands. For example, Owen Lai has been building his own product barriers and making his professional products better.
No matter which category you belong to, once you have completed the construction from 0 to 1 and have money and equipment, although you have taken advantage of external dividends and have better monetization opportunities, you will always face cruel competition in the future. . From the brutal competition of marble tiles to the brutal competition of modern bricks, it will definitely extend to slate plates in the future. Product competition always considers the underlying product capabilities and product differentiation. How to be different in the defined battlefield, these soul tortures still have to be faced.
The last "field" is the scene application experience. Designers use products, designers are directors, and products are actors. Whether the director can do a good job in laying out the script depends largely on whether the actors are expressive enough.Good enough.
Product specifications are getting bigger and bigger, and may even get bigger. In the process, the distance between people and products is getting closer and closer. In the past, our contact with products was the distance from the human eye to the ground. Now it may be the distance from the human eye to the desktop. In the future, it will be more accessible and the distance of experience will be closer and closer. From this, we realized that the product will extend to a wider field. From traditional walls and floors, to furniture, to overall home decoration, or more space and soft furnishings, there are possibilities.
There will be many points of contact between products and people, so the interface between products and people should focus on intimacy and pleasure. Whether it can be more humane and make people more comfortable is the key to the success or failure of the product experience. Therefore, in addition to vision, we also need to pay attention to whether the interactive interface can have good interactivity with people and make people more pleasant.
In the end, I want to say that without Bologna time, we have not stopped development because of the suspension of Bologna time. China's ceramic industry is still running fast. This is an opportunity or a change. It has given rise to the development of China's ceramic industry. With our own product system capabilities and more independent thinking, we look forward to China’s debut as soon as possible. This is what we can do. In the end, we will eventually change the direction of the tide.
