By Adam Coleman

SYDNEY: At the launch of its new Double Drive top loading washing machine at its Silverwater showroom yesterday, Haier Australia has attacked what it believes to be a misconception in the Australian market – that all Chinese appliances are cheap and of poor quality.

“Some retailers and consumers, when they hear ‘Chinese Brand’ they think it is cheap, and maybe not reliable,” said Haier Australia CEO, Karl Qin.

“We want to tell everyone we are already here with the top technology, the top products and we would like to invite our competitors to try and beat us.”

“We want to distance ourselves from the other Chinese brands,” said Haier national marketing manager, Tony Gersback.

“Some other [Chinese] brands out there are pulling us down. The product they are putting out in the market is not superior.”

“It’s not only the other Chinese brands it is the retailers as well,” said Quin.

“Everytime they go to China they want to search for the ‘junk’ products. They don’t want to see or good products. Haier has a lot of good well-featured products but they don’t want to buy them. They say ‘your products are over featured, how about you take this out and take that out and make it  a 99 sell’,” he said.

“As a Chinese brand we want to stand up and say we are the number one Made in China product. Made in China can be reliable, can be competent and we will give the local consumer much more benefit. It starts today in Australia with Haier.

“As far as our range is concerned we are now in 550 Retravision stores, certainly a number of Harvey Norman stores and we are also dealing with the Narta buying goup,” said Gersback.

“They are certainly encouraged by our products and are prepared to take them on. So from a distribution point of view we are certainly growing at a rapid rate.”