Sydney manufacturer targets residential market with new products.
Sydney-based water appliance manufacturer, Zip Water, has reinforced its commitment to the residential market with a launch of new HydroTap products at the Utzon Room within the Sydney Opera House this week.
The Arc, Cube and Elite HydroTaps provide the ability to select either chilled, boiling or sparkling water all from the same tap. A separate model – the Celsius Design range delivers a mixer tap featuring a blend of hot and cold water as well as the additional option of either boiling, chilled or sparkling.
The new design and colours are available in bright chrome, brushed chrome, matte black, gloss black as well as the newly-released rose gold.
“Our history has really been around installing products in work places and that is by far the biggest part of our business,” said Zip Water CEO John Doumani (pictured below in the centre) at the event on Wednesday evening.
“But we always recognised the opportunity of installing our products in homes was a big opportunity and over the last 12 months we have really focused on it.”
After conducting some research, Doumani and his team realised that people wanted to enjoy the convenience offered by Zip Water products at home.
“Consumers know us in the office, and the research showed us they would love to have us at home. We realised we do have the right to play in the residential market, but we also knew that we have a lot of work to do to play successfully. So we knew there was a positive pre-disposition, but we needed to get a lot of things right – so the first thing we needed to do was get our brand positioning right and our brand communications.
“As a business, we have been around for 65 years and what we have stood for is instant boiling water – it is our heritage and ancestry but more recently we have moved on and the products we are installing are not just instant boiling, we now have instant chilled and instant sparkling.
“Historically we saw ourselves as a tap company, but we are actually a health and wellbeing company. Initially people want to install our products for convenience because you don’t have to wait for a kettle to boil, you don’t have to wait for something to cool down in the fridge and you don’t have to go up to the shops to buy a bottle of sparkling water. But once they have installed the product in their homes, they have found that their families start drinking more water and they stopped drinking some of the bad stuff and it creates a lot more consumption of water and we know that dehydration is one of the biggest health issues out there.
“So we want to position our product from being a nice-to-have and we want to become more of a must-have in people’s minds when they are thinking about a new kitchen or an existing kitchen one of the first things they think about is ‘I have to get one of those Zip HydroTaps as then I am doing the best thing by my family because we will drink more water and it is healthy.”
Using these consumer insights, Zip Water has since invested over $5 million into its marketing campaign, themed ‘The Zip Effect’ – which refers specifically to the positive effect that occurs after installing these products in the home.
Former Miele Appliances general manager of marketing and head of professional, Cliff Thompson is the residential business manager for Zip Water products which are currently sold through selected retailers including Harvey Norman, Winning Appliances and speciality appliance stores nationally.